PROGRESS
AND
POVERTY
AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL
DEPRESSIONS AND OF INCREASE OF WANT
WITH INCREASE OF WEALTH
THE REMEDY
BY HENRY GEORGE
the modern -library • NEW YORK
PIONEER BOOK DEPOT.
POST DOX NO 154
G.P.O. BOMBAY.
^andoM House is the publisher of
THE MODERN LIBRARY
BENNETT A, CERi' • DONALD S. KLOPFER • ROBERT K. HAAS
Manufactured in tbc United States of America
Printed by Parkway Printing Company Bound by H. Woiff
TO THOSE WHO,
SEEING THE VICE AND MISERY THAT SPRIN.G PROM
THE UNEQUAL' DISTRIBUTION
OP WEALTH AND PRIVILEGE,
PEEL THE POSSIBILITY OP A HIGHER SOCIAL STATE
AND WOULD STRIVE POR ITS ATTAINMENT
San PaANOisoo, Marcli, 1879.
Make for thyself a definition or description
of the thing which is presented to thee, so as
to see distinctly what kind of a thing it is,,
in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete
entirety, and tell thyself its proper .name,
and the names of the things of which it has
been compounded, and into which it will be
resolved. For nothing is so productive of
elevation of mind as to be able to examine
methodically and truly every object which is
presented to thee in life, and always to look
at things so as to see at the same time what
kind of universe this is, and what kind of use
everything performs in it, and what value
everything has with reference to the whole,
and what with reference to man, who is a
citizen of the highest city, of which all other
cities are like families; what each thing is,, and
of what it is composed, and how long it is the
nature of this thing to endure.
— Marcus Aurelius Antoninus,
FOREWORD
TO THE FIFTIETH ANNRTERSARY EDITION
The fame won hy Heniy George as writer, economist
and philosopher, has not diminished with the years that
have passed since his death in 1897. On the contrary,
there has been a steadily broadening recognition of his
intellectual eminence. Significant of this was the recent
Appreciation by John Dewey, the famous American
educator and professor of philosophy at Columbia Uni-
versity, which contained these striking' statements:
"It ■would require less than the fingers of the t'wo hands to
enumerate those "who, from Plato do-wn, rank with Henry George
among the world’s social philosophers. . . . No man, no graduate
of a higher educational institution, has a right to regard himself
as an educated man in social thought unless he has some first-
hand acquaintance with the theoretical contribution of this great
American thinker.”
In this fiftieth year after the first publication of
“Progress and Poverty” it must appear to that growing
body of workers for social justice who in many lands
are spreading George’s gospel, that there is at this time
as great a need as ever for the comprehension of the
truth he sought to make plain. For, as in 1879, there
' is widespread social unrest in the world. Industrial de-
pression and unemployment are conditions cominon to
many lands, and even in ■ the nominally prosperous
atmosphere of the United States, vast numbers are com-
‘ pelled to live in poverty or close to its border line. It
would appear that in •the half century since “Progress
and Poverty” was published, there has been little abate-
ment of the social and economic ills that have afflicted
vii
vm
FOREWORD
the human family everywhere, and that recur, with
unfailing regularity, in cj’-cles that seem unexplainable
except to the followers of Henry George. And, at a
time when world opinion is demanding that statesman-
ship shall outlaw war, it is important to recall that the
World Economic Conference, held at Geneva in 1927
at the call of the League of Nations, found a definite
interdependence of the economic causes of war and
industrial depression. It seems like a vindication of the
philosophy of Henrj'- George to find that this Conference,
to which the representatives of fifty nations were called,
unanimously arrived at the conclusion that:
"The main trouble now is neither any material shortage of the
resources of nature nor any inadequacy in man’s power to ex-
ploit them. It is all, in one form or another, a maladjustment;
not an insufficient productive capacity, but a series of impedi-
ments to the full utilization of that capacity. The main obstacles
to economic revival have been the hindrances opposed to the free
flow of labor, capital, and goods.”
This, in efifect, is what Henry George maintained fifty
years ago, contrary to the teachings of the accepted
political economy.
Greater need than ever exists for a re-examination
by mankind of the remedy for the world’s social and
economic ills that is involved in the fundamental pro-
posals of Henry George — proposals which Tolstoy de-
clared must ultimately be accepted by the world because
they are so logical and so unanswerable.
Therefore, the trustees of the Robert Schalkenbach
Foundation, of New York, which was formed to bring
about a wider acquaintance with the social and economic
philosophy of Henry George, have considered this an
appropriate time to produce from new plates this Fiftieth
Anniversary Edition of "Progress, and Poverty.”
HOW THeI^Bk 'feAMF^i^d^^MTTEN
In the Introduction to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition,
Henry George, Jr. told interestingly, as follows, how “Progress
and Poverty” came to be written:
Out of the open West came a young man of less than
thirty to this great city of New York. He was small
of stature and slight of build. His alma mater had been
the forecastle and the printing-office. He was poor,
unheralded, unknown. He came from a small city ris-
ing at the western golden portals of the country to set
up here, for a struggling little newspaper there, a tele-
graphic news bureau, despite the opposition of the com-
bined powerful press and telegraph monopolies. The
struggle was too unequal. The young man was over-
borne by the monopolies and his little paper crushed.
This man was Henry George and the time was 1869.
But though defeated, Henry George was not. van-
quished. Out of this struggle had come a thing that was
to grow and grow until it should fill the minds and
hearts, of multitudes and be as “an army with banners.”
For in the intervals of rest from his newspaper strug-
gle in this city the young correspondent had musinglj'
walked the streets. As he walked he was filled with
wonder at the manifestations of vast wealth. Here, as
nowhere that he had dreamed of, were private fortunes
that rivaled the riches of the fabled Mpnte Cristo. But
here, also, side by side with the palaces of the princely
rich, was to be seen a poverty and degradation, a want
and shame, such as made the young man from the open
West sick at heart.
Why in a land so bountifully blest, with enough and
more than enough for all, should there be such inequal-
ity of conditions? Such heaped wealth interlocked with
such deep .and debasing want? Why, amid such super-
ix
% .HOW THE BOOK CAME TO BE WRITTEN
abundance, should strong men vainly look for work?
Why should women faint with hunger, and little chil-
dren spend the morning of life in the treadmill of roil?
Was this intended in the order of things? No, he
could not believe it. And suddenly there came to him —
there in daylight, in the city street— a burning thought,
a call, a vision. Every nerve quivered. And he made
a vow that he would never rest until he had found the
cause of, and, if he could, the remedy for, this deepen-
ing poverty amid advancing wealth.
Returning to San Francisco soon after his telegraphic
news failure, and keeping his vow nurtured in his heart,
Henry George perceived that land speculation locked up
vast territories against labor. E''’'erywhere he perceived
an effort to '^corner” land; an effort to get it and to
hold it, not for use, but for a “rise.” Everywhere he
perceived that this caused all who wished to use it to
compete with each other for it; and he foresaw that as
population grew the keener that competition would be-
come. Those who had a monopoly of the land would
practically own those who had to use the land.
Filled with these ideas, Henry George in 1871 sat
down and in the course of four months WTote a little
book under title of “Our Land and Land Policy.” In
that small volume of forty-eight pages he advocated the
destruction of land monopoly by shifting all taxes from
labor and the products of labor and concentrating them
in one tax on the value of land, regardless of improve-
ments. A thousand copies of this small book were
printed, but the author quickly perceived that really to
command attention, the work would have to be done
more thoroughly.
That rhore thorough work came something more than
six years later. In August, 1877, the writing of “Prog-
ress and Poverty” was begun. It was the oak that grew
out of the acorn of “Our Land and Land Policy.” The
HOW THE BOOK CAME TO BE WBITTEN Xi
larger book became “an inquiry into industrial depres-
sions’ and of increase of want with increase of wealth,”
and pointed out the remedy.
The book was finished after a year and seven months
ofiintense labor, and the undergoing of privations that
caused the family to do without a pgrlor carpet, and
which frequently forced the author to pawn his per-
sonal effects.
And when the last page was written, in the dead of
night, when he was entirely alone, Henry George flung
himself upon his knees and wept like a child. He had
kept his vow. The rest was in the Master’s hands.
Then the manuscript was sent to New York to find a
publisher. Some of the publishers there thought it
visionary; some, revolutionary. Most of them thought
it unsafe, and all thought that it would not sell, or at
least sufficiently to repay the outlay. Works on po-
litical economy even by men of renown were notori-
ously not money-makers. What hope then for a work
of this nature from an obscure man — unknown, and
without prestige of any kind? At length, however,
D. Appleton & Co. said, they would publish it if the
author would bear the main cost, that of making the
plates. There was nothing else for it, and so in order
that the plate-making should be done under his own di-'
rection Henry George had the, type set in a friend’s
printing-office in San Francisco, the author of the book
setting the first two stickfuls himself.
Before the. plates, made from this type, were shipped
East, they were put upon a printing-press and an
“Author’s Proof Edition” of. five hundred copies waj^
struck off. One of these copies Henry George sent to
his venerable father in Philadelphia, eighty-one years
old. At the same time the son wrote:
It is with deep feeling of gratitude to, Our Father in Heaven
that I send you a printed copy of this book. I am grateful that
Xii HOW THE BOOK CASIE TO BE WEITTEN
I have been enabled to live to write it, and that 5’’ou have been
enabled to live to see it. It -represents a great deal of work and
good deal of sacrifice, but now it is done. It toH not be recog-
nized at first — maj’be not for some time — but it will ultimately
be considered a great book, will be published in both hemispheres,
and be translated into different languages. This I know, though
neither of us may ever see it here. But the belief that I have
expressed in this book — the belief that there is yet another life
for us — makes that of little moment.
The prophecy of recognition of the book’s greatness
was fulfilled very quickly. The Appletons in New York
brought out the first regular market edition in January,
1880, just twenty-five years ago. Certain of the San
Trancisco newspapers derided book and author as the
^‘hobby” of “little Harry George,” and predicted that
the work would never be heard of. But the press else-
where in the country and abroad, from the old
“Thunderer” in London down, and the great periodical
publications, headed by the “Edinburgh Preview,” hailed
it as a remarkable book that could not be lightly brushed
aside. In the United States and England it was put
into cheap paper editions, and in that form outsold the
most popular novels of the day. In both countries, too,
it ran serially in the columns of newspapers. Into all
the chief tongues of Europe it was translated, there
being three translations into German. Probably no
exact statement of the book’s extent of publication can
be made; but a conservative estimate is that, embracing
all forms and languages, more than two million copies .
of “Progress and Poverty” have been printed to date;
and that including with these the other books that have
followed from Henry George’s pen, and which might
be called “The Progress and Poverty Literature,” per-
haps five million copies have been given to the world.
Heney Geoege, Je.
New Yobk,
January 24, 1905.
PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION
, The views herein set forth were in the main briefly stated in a
pamphlet entitled “Our Land and Land Policy,” published in San
Francisco in 1871. I then intended, as soon as I could, to present
them more fully, but the opportunity did not for a long time
occur. In the meanwhile I became even more firmly convinced
of their truth, and saw more completely and clearly their rela-
tions; and I also saw how many false ideas and erroneous habits
of thought stood in the way of their recognition, and how neces-’
sary it was to go over the whole ground.
This I have here tried to do, as thoroughly as space would per-
mit. It has been necessary for me to clear away before I could'
build up, and to write at once for those who have made no
previous study of such subjects, and for those who are familiar
with economic reasonings; and, so great is the scope of the argu-
ment that it has been impossible to treat with the fullness they
deserve many of the questions raised. What I have 'most en-
deavored to do is to establish general principles, trusting to my
readers to cariy further their applications where this is needed.
In certain respects this book will be best appreciated by those
who have some knowledge of economic literature; but no previ-
ous reading is necessary to the understanding of the argument or
the passing of judgment upon its conclusions. The facts upon
which I have relied are not facts which can be verified only by
a search through libraries. They are facts of common observa-
tion and common knowledge, which every reader- can verifj’- for
himself, just as he can decide whether the reasoning from them
is or is not valid.
Beginning with a- brief statement of facts which suggest this in-
quiry, I proceed to examine the explanation currently given in
the name of political economy of the reason why, in spite of the
increase of productive power, wages tend to the minimum of a
bare living. This examination shows that the current doctrine of,
wages is founded upon a misconception;' that, in truth, wages are
produced by the labor for which they are paid, and should, other
things being equal, increase with the number of laborers. Here
the inquiiy meets a doctrine which is the foundation and center,
of most important economic theories, and which has powerfully
PREFACE
Jm
we are already beginning to feel the effects of having admitted
this erroneous and destructive principle.
The inquiri' then passes to the field of practical statesmanship.
It is seen that private property' in land, instead of being neces-
sary to its improvement and use, stands in the way of improve*
ment and use, and entails an enormous waste of productive
forces; that the recognition of the common right to land involves
no shock or dispossession, but is to be reached by the simple and
ea^' method of abolishing all taxation save that upon land
'V’^alues. And this an inquiry into the principles of taxation shows
to be, in all respects, the best subject of taxation.
A consideration of the effects of the change proposed then
.shows that it would enormously increase production; would se-
cure justice in distribution; would benefit all classes; and would
make possible an advance to a higher and nobler civilization.
The inquiry now rise.s to a wider field, and recommences from
-another starting point. For not only do the hopes whicb have
been raised come into collision with the widespread idea that
asocial progress is possible only by slow race improvement, but
the conclusions we have arrived at assert certain laws which, if
they are really natural laws, must be manifest in universal his-
tory. As a final test, it therefore becomes necessary to work out
the law of human progress, for certain great facts which force
"themselves on our attention, as soon as we begin to consider this
isubject, seem utterly inconsistent with what is now the current
theory. This inquiry shows that differences in civilization are
not due to differences in individuals, but rather to differences in
social organization; that progress, always kindled by association,
always passes into retrogression as inequality is developed; and
that even now, in modem civilization, the causes which have de-
stroyed all previous civilizations are beginning to manifest them-
selves, and that mere political democrat:y is running its course
toward anarchy and despotism. But it also identifies the law of
social life with the great moral law of justice, and, proving previ-
ous conclusions, shows how retrogression may be prevented and
a grander advance begun. This ends the inquiry. The final
chapter will explain itself.
The great importance of this inquiry will be obvious. If it
has been carefully and logically pursued, its conclusions com-
jetely change the' character of political economy, give it the
coherence and certitude of a true science, and bring it into full
eirmpatby with the aspirations of the masses of men, from which
^as long been estranged. What I have done in this book, if
I have correctly solved the great problem I have sought to inr
PREFACE
xvii
vestigate, is, to unite the truth perceived by the school of Smith
and Ricardo to the truth perceived by the schools of Proudhon
and Lasalle; to show that Icassez faire (in its full true meaning)
opens the way to a realization of the noble dreams of socialism;
to identify social law with moral law, and to disprove ideas
which in the minds of many cloud grand and elevating percep-
tions.
This work was written between August, 1877, and March, 1879,
and the plates finished by September of that year. Since that
time new illustrations have been given of the correctness of the
views herein advanced, and the march of events — and especially
that great movement which has begun in Great Britain in the
Irish land agitation — shows still more clearly the pressing nature
of the problem I have endeavored to solve. But there has been
nothing in the criticisms they have received to induce the change
or modification of these views — ^in fact, I have yet to see an
objection not answered in advance in the book itself. And ex-
cept that some verbal errors have been corrected and a preface
added, this edition is the same as previous ones.
Henrt George,
New York, November, 1880,
Henry George, bom Septeniber 2, 1839, died October 29, 1897.
During the last months of his life “Progress and Poverty” was
reset for new electrotype plates. Mr, George then made some
slight alterations in syntax and punctuation; clarified the phrase-
ology of the plane illustration in the chapter on interest (Book
III, Chapter III) ; added a reference to the recantation of Her-
bert Spencer (note to Book VII, Chapter III) ; and made a dis-
tinction between patents and copyrights (note to Book VIII,
Chapter III). With these minor exceptions, the book is identical
with the fourth edition described in the above preface. The
present edition (1929) has been reset for new plates, and except
for a slight difference in paging, conforms to previous editions.
xiv
PREFACE
influenced thought in all directions— the Malthusian doctrine, that
population tends to increase faster than subsistence. Examina-
tion, however, shows that this doctrine has no real support either
in fact or in analogy, and that when brought to a decisive test it
is utterly disproved.
Thus far the results of the inquir3% though extremely impor-
tant, are mainly negative. They show that current theories do
not satisfactorily e-xplain the connection of poverty with material
progress, but throw no light upon the problem itself, beyond
showing that its solution must be sought in the laws which govern
the distribution of wealth. It therefore becomes necessaiy to
cany the inquiiy into this field. A preliminaiy review shows
that the three laws of distribution must necessarily correlate with
each other, which as laid down by the current political economy
they fail to do, and an examination of the terminology in use
reveals the confusion of thought by which this discrepancy has
been slurred over. Proceeding then to v/ork out the laws of
distribution, I first take up the la%v of rent. This, it is readily
seen, is correctly apprehended by the current political economy.
But it is also seen that the full scope of this law has not been
appreciated, and that it involves as corollaries the laws of wages
and interest — ^the cause which determines what part of the prod-
uce shall go to the land owner necessarily determining what
part shall be left for labor and capital. Without resting here, I
proceed to an independent deduction of the laws ''of interest and
wages. I have stopped to determine the real cause and justifica-
tion of interest, and to point out a source of much misconception
. — the confounding of what are really the profits of monopoly
with the legitimate earnings of capital. Then returning to the
main inquiry, investigation shows that interest must rise and fall
with wages, and depends ultimately upon the same thing as rent
— the margin of cultivation or point in production where rent
begins. A similar but independent investigation of the law of
wages yields similar harmonious results. Thus the three laws of
distribution are brought into mutual support and harmony, and
the fact that with material progress rent everywhere advances is
seen to explain the fact that wages and interest do not advance.
What causes .this advance of rent is the next question that
arises, and it necessitates an examination of the effect of material
progress upon the distribution of wealth. Separating the factors
of material progress into increase of population and improve-
ments in the arts, it is first seen that increase in population tends
‘ constantly, not merely by reducing the margin of cultivation, but
by localizing the economies and powers which come with in-
i’REFACE
XV
creased population, to increase the proportion of the aggregate
produce which is taken in rent, and to reduce that which goes as
wages and interest. Then eliminating increase of population, it
is seen tliat improvement in the methods and powers of produc-
tion tends in the same direction, and, land being held as private
property, would produce in a stationary population all the effects
attributed by the Malthusian doctrine to pressure of population.
And then a consideration of the effects of the continuous increase
in land values which thus spring from material progress reveals
in the speculative advance inevitably begotten when land is pri-
vate propertj' a derivative but most powerful cause of the increase
of rent and the crowding do^vm of wages. Deduction shows that
this cause must necessarily produce periodical industrial depres-
sions, and induction proves the conclusion; while from the analy--
sis which has thus been made it is seen that the necessary result
of material progress, land being private property, is, no matter
what the increase in population, to force laborers to wages which
give but a bare living.
This identification of the cause that associates poverty with
progress points to the remedy, but it is to so radical a remedy
that I have next deemed it necessary to inquire whether there
is any other remedy. Beginning the investigation again from
another starting point, I have passed in examination the measures
and tendencies currentb'’ advocated or trusted in for the improve-
ment of the condition of the laboring masses. The result of this
investigation is to prove the preceding one, as it shows that
nothing short of making land common property can permanently
relieve poverty and check the tendency of wages to the starva-
tion point.
The question of justice now naturally arises, and the inquiry
passes into the field of ethics. An investigation of the nature and
basis of property shows that there, is a fundamental and irrecon-
cilable difference between property in things which are the product
of labor and property in land ; that the one has a natural basis
and sanction while the other has none, and that the recognition
of exclusive property in land is necessarily a denial of the right
of property in the products of labor. Further investigation shows
that private property in land always has, and always must, as
development proceeds, lead to the enslavement of the laboring
class; that land owners can make no just claim to compensation
if society choose to resume its right ; that so far from ' private
property in land being in accordance with the natural perceptions
of men, the very reverse is true, and that in the United States
Jcvi
PREFACE
we are already beginning to feel the effects of having admitted
tins erroneous and destructive principle.
The inquiry’’ then passes to the field of practical statesmanship.
It is seen that private property in land, instead of being neces-
sary to its improvement and use, stands in the way of improve-
ment and use, and entails an enormous waste of productive
forces; that the recognition of the common right to land involves
no shock or dispossession, but is to be reached by the simple and
easy method of abolishing all taxation save that upon land
values. And this an inquiry into the principles of taxation shows
to be, in all rejects, the best subject of taxation.
A consideration of the effects of the change proposed then
.-shows that it would enormously increase production; would se-
cure justice in distribution; would benefit all classes; and would
make possible an advance to a higher and nobler civilization.
The inquiiy now rises to a wider field, and recommences from
smother starting point. For not only do the hopes whicli have
been raised come into collision with the widespread idea that
social progress is possible only by slow race improvement, but
the conclusions we have arrived at assert certain laws which, if
they are really natural laws, must be manifest in universal his-
tory. As a final test, it therefore becomes necessary to work out
the law of human progress, for certain great facts which force
'themselves on our attention, as soon as we begin to consider this
subject, seem utterly inconsistent with what is now the current
theory. This inquiry shows that differences in civilization are
not due to differences in individuals, but rather to differences in
social organization; that progress, always kindled by association,
always passes into retrogression as inequality is developed; and
that even now, in modem civilization, the causes which have de-
stroyed all previous civilizations are beginning to manifest them-
selves, and that mere political democracy is running its course
toward anarchy and despotism. But it also identifies the law of
social life with the great moral law of justice, and, proving previ-
ous conclusions, shows how retrogression may be prewnted' and
a grander advance begun. This ends the inquiry. The final
chapter will explain itself.
The great importance of this inquiry will be obvious. If it
has been carefully and logically pursued, its concluaons com-
pletely change the charactei; of political economy, give it the
coherence and certitude of a true science, and bring it into full
sympathy with the aspirations of the masses of men, from which
it has long been estranged. What I have done in this book, if
I have correctly solved the great problem I have sought to inr
PREFACE
xvii
vestigate, is, to unite the truth perceived by the school of Smith
and Ricardo to the truth perceived by the schools of Proudhon
and Lasalle; to show that laissez jaire (in its full true meaning)
opens the w’aj' to a realization of the noble dreams of socialism;
to identify social law with moral law, and to disprove ideas
which in the minds of many cloud grand and elevating percep-
tions.
This work was written between August, 1877, and March, 1879,
and the plates finished by September of that year. Since that
time new illustrations have been given of the correctness of the
views herein advanced, and the march of events — and especially
that great movement which has begun in Great Britain in the
Irish land agitation — shows still more clearly the pressing nature
of the problem I have endeavored to solve. But there has been
nothing in the criticisms they have received to induce the change
or modification of these views — in fact, I have yet to see an
objection not answered in advance in the book itself. And ex-
cept that some verbal errors have been corrected and a preface
added, this edition is the same as previous ones.
Henry George.
New York, November, 1880.
Henry George, bom September 2, 1839, died October 29, 1897.
During the last months of his life “Progress and Poverty” was
reset for new electrotype plates. Mr. George then made some
slight alterations in syntax and punctuation; clarified the phrase-
ology of the plane illustration in the chapter on interest (Book
III, Chapter III) ; added a reference to the recantation of Her-
bert Spencer (note to Book VII, Chapter III) ; and made a dis-
tinction between patents and copyrights (note to Book VIII,
Chapter III). With these minor exceptions, the book is identical
with the fourth edition described in the above preface. The
present edition (1929) has been reset for new plates, and except
for a slight difference in paging, conforms to previous editions.
There must be refuge! Men
Perished in winter winds till one smote fire
From flint stones coldly hiding what they held,
The red spark treasured from the kindling sun;
They gorged on flesh like wolves, till one sowed com,
Which grew a weed, yet makes the life of man;
They mowed and babbled till some tongue struck speech,
And patient fingers framed the lettered sound.
What good gift have my brothers, but it came
From search and strife and loving sacrifice?
— Edwin Arnold.
Never yet
Share of Truth was vaiiJy set
In the world’s wide fallow;
After hands shall sow the seed.
After hEinds, from hill and mead.
Reap the harvests yellow.
— Whittier.
CONTENTS
Introductory
PAGE
The Problem 3
Book I. — ^Wages and Capitad
CHAPTER
I. — The current doctrine of wages — ^its insufficiency 17
II. — ^The meaning of the terms 31
III. — ^W’ages not drawn from capital, but produced by the
labor . 50
IV. — ^The maintenance of laborers not drawn from capital . 71
V. — The real functions of capital 80
Book II. — Population and Subsistence
I. — The Malthusian theory, its genesis and support ... 91
n. — ^Inferences from facts 103
ni. — Inferences from analogy 129
IV. — Disproof of the Malthusian theory ' . . . - . . . . 140
Book III. — The Laws of Distribution
I. — ^The inquiry narrowed to the laws of distribution —
necessary relation of these laws 153
II. — Rent and the law of rent 165
III. — Interest and the cause of interest 173
IV. — Of spurious capital and of profits often ihistaken for
interest ’....... 189
V. — The law of interest . . , 195
VI. — ^Wages and the law of wages .• . . . ' . .' . . . 204
VII. — Correlation and co-ordination of these laws . . . .' 218
VIII. — The statics of the problem thus explained .... 221
Book IV. — ^Effect of Material Progress -
UPON THE Distribution of Wealth
I. — ^The dynamics of the problem yet to seek . . ... 227
II. — ^Effect of increase of population upon the distribution
of wealth 230
six
XX
CONTENTS
CHAPTEH ^
III, — Effect of improvements in the arts upon the distribu-
tion of wealth 244
IV, — ^Effect of the expectation raised by material progress , 255
Book V. — The PnoBLB-M Soetod
I. — The primaiy cause of recurring paroxysms of industrial
depresrion 263
II, — The persistence of poverty amid advancing wealth . . 282
Book VI, — ^Tirs Remedv
I. — ^Insufficiency of remedies currently advocated . , , 299
II, — ^The true remedy 328
Book VII, — Justice of the Remedy
I. — Injustice of private property in land 333
II, — ^Enslavement pf laborers the ultimate result of private
property in land 347
III. — Claim of land owners to compensation 358
IV. — Property in land historically considered 368
V. — Property in land in the United States 385
Book VIII. — Application of the Remedy
I, — ^Private property in land inconsistent with the best use
of land . .^ 397
II, — How equal rights to the land may be asserted and
secured , 403
III. — The proposition tried by the canons of taxation . . . 408
IV, — ^Jndoreements and objections 422
Book IX, — ^Effects of the REaiEDY
I. — Of the efliect upon the production of wealth .... 433
11. — Of the effect upon distribution and thence upon pro-
duction 440
III. — Of the effect upon individuals and classes .... 447
IV. — Of the changes that would be wrought in social organi-
zation and social life 454
Book X. — The Law of Human Pboghess
I. — The current theory of human progress — ^its insufficiency 475
II. — Differences in civilization — to what due . , . . . 489
III. — ^The law of human progress 506
IV. — How modem civilization may decline 527
V. — The central truth 544
Conclusion
The problem of individual life 555
INTRODUCTORY
THE PROBLEM
Ye build! ye build! but ye enter not in,
Like the tribes whom the desert devoured in their sin
From the land of promise ye fade and die,
Ere its verdure gleams forth on your wearied eye.
— Mrs. Sigourney.
INTRODUCTORY
THE PROBLEM
The present century has been marked by a prodigious
increase in wealth-producing power.- The utilization of
steam and electricity, the introduction pf improved proc-'
esses and labor-saving machinery, the greater subdivi-
sion and grander scale of production, the wonderful
facilitation of exchanges, have multiplied enormously
the effectiveness of labor.
At the beginning of this marvelous era it was natural
to expect, and it was expected, that labor-saving inven-
tions would lighten the toil and improve the condition
of- the laborer; that the enormous increase in the power
of producing wealth would make real poverty a thing of
the past. Could a man of the last century — a Franklin
or a Priestley — have seen, in a vision of the future, the
steamship taking the place of the sailing vessel, the rail-
road train of the wagon, the reaping machine of the
scythe, the threshing machine of the flail ; could he have
heard the throb of the engines that in obedience to
human will, and for the satisfaction of human desire,
exert a power greater than that of all the men and all
the beasts of burden of the earth combined; could he
have seen the forest tree transformed into finished- lum-'
ber — ^into doors, sashes, blinds, boxes or barrels, with
hardly the touch of a human hand; the great workshops
where boots and shoes are turned out by the case ’ with
less labor than the old-fashioned cobbler could have
put on a sole; the factories where, under the eye'of a
girl, cotton becomes cloth faster than hundreds of stal-
wart weavers could have turned it out with their hand-
3
4
INTRODUCTORY
looms; could he have seen steam hammers shaping
mammoth shafts and mighty anchors, and delicate ma-
chinery making tiny watches; the diamond drill cutting
through the heart of the rocks, and coal oil sparing the
whale; could he have realized the enormous saving of
labor resulting from improved facilities of exchange and
communication — sheep killed in Australia eaten fresh in
England, and the order given by the London banker in
the afternoon executed in San Francisco in the morning
of the same day; could he have conceived of the hun-
dred thousand improvements which these only suggest,
what would he have inferred as to the social condition
of mankind?
It would not have seemed like an inference; further
than the vision went it would have seemed as though
he saw; and his heart would have leaped and his nerves
would have thrilled, as one who from a height beholds
just ahead of the thirst-stricken caravan the living
gleam of rustling woods and the glint of laughing
waters. Plainly, in the sight of the imagination, he ^
would have beheld these new forces elevating society-,
from its very foundations, lifting the very poorest above ;
the possibility of want, exempting the very lowest from
anxiety for the material needs of life; he would have
seen these slaves of the lamp of knowledge taking on j
themselves the traditional curse, these muscles ^pf iroh i’
and sinews of steel making the poorest laborer’s life a:[
holiday, in which every high quality and noble impulse^
could have scope to grow.
And out of these bounteous material conditions he
would have seen arising, as necessary- sequences, moral
conditions realizing the golden age of which mankind
have always dreamed. Youth no longer stunted and
starved; age no longer harried by avarice; the child at
play with the tiger; the man with the muckrrake drink-
ing in- the glory of the stars. Foul things fled, flerce
the peoblem
5
ttiings_,tame; discord ..Jurned-itox-Jiarmon^ For how
could there be greed where all had enough? How could
the vice, the crime, the ignorance, the brutality, that
spring from poverty and the fear of poverty, exist where
poverty had vanished? Who should crouch where all
were freemen; who oppress where all were peers?
More or less vague or clear, these have been the hopes,
these the dreams born of the improvements which give
this wonderful century its preeminence. They have
sunk so deeply into the popular mind as radically to
change the currents of thought, to recast creeds and dis-
place the most fundamental conceptions. The haunting
visions of higher possibilities have not merely gathered
splendor and vividness, but their direction has changed
— instead of seeing behind the faint tinges of an expiring
sunset, all the glory of the daybreak has decked the
skies before.
It is true that disappointment has 'followed disap-
pointment, and that discovery upon discovery, and in-i
vention after invention, have neither lessened the toil of\
those who most need respite, nor brought plenty to the '
poor. But there have. been so many. things to which it
seemed this failure could be laid, that up to our time the
new faith has hardly weakened. We have better appre-
ciated the difficulties to be overcome; but not the less
trusted that the tendency of the times was to overcome
them.
Now, however, we are coming into collision with facts
which there can be no mistaking. From all parts of the
civilized world coine complaints of industrial depres- i
, sion; of labor condemned to involuntary idleness; of '
capital massed and wasting; of pecuniary distress among *
business men; of want and suffering and anxiety among
the working classes. All the dull, deadening pain, all I
the keen, maddening anguish, that to great masses of ?
men are involved in the words “hard times,” afflict the !
INTRODtrCTORY
world to-day. This state of things, common to com-
munities differing so widely in situation, in political
institutions, in fiscal and financial s3’’stems, in density
of population and in social organization, can hardly
be accounted for by local causes. Tliere is distress
; where large standing armies are maintained, but there
is also distress where the standing armies are nominal;
there is distress where protective tariffs stupidly and
wastefully hamper trade, but there is also distress
where trade is nearly free; there is distress where auto-
cratic government yet prevails, but there is also distress
where political power is wholly in the hands of the peo-
ple; in countries where paper is money, and in countries
where gold and silver are the only currency. Evidently,
beneath all such things as these, we must infer a com-
mon cause.
That there is a common cause, and that it is either
what we call material progress or something closely
connected with material progress, becomes more than an
inference when it is noted that the phenoinena we class
together and speak of as industrial depression are but
intensifications of phenomena which always accompany
material progress, and which show themselves more
clearly and strongly as material progress goes on.
Where the conditions to which material progress every-
where tends are most fully realized — that is, to say,
where population is densest, wealth greatest, and the
machinery of production and exchange most highly
developed — ^we find the deepest poverty, the sha:^est
struggle for existence, and the most of enforced idle-
aess. . ^ .
It is to the newer countries — ^that is, to the countries
where material progress is yet in its earlier stages — ^that .
laborers emigrate in search of higher wages, and capital
Sows in search of higher interest. It is in the older
countries — ^that is to say, the countries where material
THE PROBLEM .7
progress has reached later stages— that widespread -desti-
tution^ is found in the midst ofjbhe_greaths|rahundan
Go into^ohe^ftiie^ew c6m^ where Anglo-Saxoii
vigor is just beginning the race of progress; where the
. machinery of production and exchange is yet rude and
inefficient; ,where the increment of wealth is not yet
great enough to enable any class to live in ease and
luxury; where the best house is but a cabin of logs or a
cloth and paper shanty, and the richest man is' forced
to daily work — and though you will find an absence of
/ wealth and all its cohcbmita,nts,"ybu' will find rib b'eg-
f gais^ ®efe ‘is’nb”lu3airy, but there is no' des'titutioh.
( No "brie makes an easy living, nor a very good living;
\ but every one can make a living, and no one able and
■ willing to work is oppressed by the fear of want.
But, just as such a community realizes the conditions
which all civilized communities are striving for, and ad-
varices in the scale of material progress — ^just as closer
settlement and a more intimate connection with the rest
, of the world, and greater utilization of labor-saving ma-
' chinery, make possible greater economies in production
, and exchange, and -wealth in consequence increases, not
merely in the aggregate, but in proportion to population
— so does poverty take a darker aspect. Some get an
infinitely better and easier living, but others find it
hard to get a living at all. The “tramp” comes with
the locomotive, and almshouses and prisons are as
surely the marks of “materiaP progress” as are costly
dwellings, rich warehouses, and magnificent churches.
Upon streets lighted with gas and patrolled by uni-
formed policemen, beggars wait for the passer-by, and
in the shadow of college, and library, and museum, are
’ gathering the more hideous Huns and fiercer Vandals of
whom Macaulay prophesied.
This fact — the great fact that poverty and all its con-
comitants show themselves in communities just as they
8
INTRODUCTORY
develop into the conditions toward which material prog-
ress tends — proves that the social difficulties existing
wherever a certain stage of progress has been reached,
do not arise from local circumstances, but are, in some
w^ay or another, engendered by progress itself.
And, unpleasant as it may be to admit it, it is at last
becoming evident that the enormous increase in produc-
tive power which has marked the present century and is
still going on wdth accelerating ratio, has no tendency
to_ e}0Tj)apeyi)qverty or to lighten the burdens of those
compelled,;^^^6il. It simply widens the gulf between
Dives and Lazarus, and makes the struggle for exist-
ence more intense. The march of invention has clothed
mankind with powers of which a century ago the bold-
est imagination could not have dreamed. But in fac-
tories where labor-saving machinery has reached its
most wonderful development, little children are at work;
wherever the new forces are anything like fully utilized,
laf classes are maintained by charity or live on the
verge~of recbufse to it; amid the greatest accumulations
of wealth, men die of starvation, and puny infants
suckle dry breasts; while everywhere the ^eed of gain,
the worship of wealthy, e ’force of the fear of
want: ’ The promised land flies before us like the mirage.'
The fruits of the tree of knowledge turn as we grasp
them to apples of Sodom that crumble at the touch.
" It is true that wealth has been greatly increased, and
that the average of comfort, leisure, and refinement has .
been raised; but these gains are not general. In them
the lowest class do not share.* I do not mean that the
*It is true that the poorest may now in certain ways enjoy
what the richest a century ago could not have commanded, but
this does not show improvement of condition so Jong as the'
ability to obtain the necessaries of life is not increased. The
beggar in a great city may enjoy many things from which the
backwoods farmer is debarred, but that does not prove the con-
THE PROBLEM . 9
condition of the lowest class has nowhere nor in anything
been improved; but that there is nowhere any im-
provement which can be credited to increased produc-
tive power. I mean that the tendency of what we call
material progress is in nowise t-o improve the condition
of the lowest class in the essentials of healthy, happy
human life. Nay, more, that it. is sti]^urther__to de-
press the condition of the Ibwest-Cta^s". 'The nevTjfprces,
elevating in their nature though they hie^ dp not act upon
the social fabric from underneath, as waS'':fciva'long;tirne
hoped and believed, but strike it at a poiw^^ermediate
between top and -bottom. , It is as though ah- immense
wedge were being forced, not underneath society, hut
through society. Those who ^ are above the point of
separation are elevated, but those who are below are
crushed down.
This depressing effect is not generally realized, for it
is not apparent where there has long, existed a class just
able to live. Wliere the lowest class barely lives, as has
been the case for a long time in many parts of Europe,
it is impossible for.it to get any lower, for the next low-
est step is out of existence’ and no tendency to further
depression can readily show itself. But in the progress
of new settlements to the conditions of older communi-
■ ties it may clearly be seen that material progress does
not merely fail to relieve poverty — it actually produces
it. In the United States it is clear that squalor and
misery, and the vices and crimes that spring from them,
everywhere increase as the village grows to the city,
and the march of development brings the advantages of
the improved methods of production and exchange.
It is in the older and richer sections of the Union that
pauperism and distress among the working classes are
dition of the city beggar better than that of the independent
farmer.
10
rNTRODUCTORY
becoming most painfully apparent. If there is less deep
poverty in. San Francisco than in New York, is it not
because San Francisco is jmt behind New York in all
that both cities are striving for? When San Francisco
reaches the point where New York now is, who can
doubt that there will also be ragged and barefooted
children on her streets?
This association of poverty with progress is the great
enigma of our times. It is the central fact from which
spring industrial, social, and political difficulties that
perplex the world, and with which statesmanship and
philanthropy and education grapple in vain. From it
come the clouds that overhang the future of the most
progressive and self-reliant nations. It is the riddle
which the Sphinx of Fate puts to our civilization, and
which not to answer is to be destroyed. So long as
all the increased wealth which modern progress brings
goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase, luxury
and make sharper the contrast between the- House of
Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and
cannot be permanent. The reaction must coine. The
tower leans from its . foundations, and every new story
but hastens the final catastrophe. To educate men who '
must be condemned to poverty, is but to make them
restive ; to base on a state of most glaring social in-
equality political institutions under which men are
theoretically equal, is to stand a pyramid on its apex.
All-important as this question is, pressing itself from
every quarter painfully upon attention, it has not yet
received a solution which accounts for all the facts and
points to any clear and simple remedy. This is shown
by the widely varying attempts to account for the pre-
vailing depression. They exhibit not merely, a diver-
gence between vulgar notions and scientific theories,
but also show that the concurrence which should exist
between those who avow the same general theories
THE PROBLEM
11
breaks up upon practical questions into' an anarchy of
opinion. Upon high economic authority we have been
told that the prevailing depression is due to over-con-
sumption; upon equally high authority, that it is due
to over-production; while the wastes of war, the ex-
tension of railroads, the attempts of workmen to keep
up wages, the demonetization of silver, the issues of
paper -money, the increase of labor-saving -machinery,
the opening of shorter avenues to trade, etc.,- are, sepa-
rately pointed out as the cause, by writers of reputation.
And while professors thus disagree, the ideas that
there is a necessary conflict between' capital and labor,
that machinery is an evil, that competition must be re-
strained and interest abolished, that wealth may be
created by the issue of money, that it is the duty of
government "to furnish capital or to furnish work, are
rapidly making way among the great body of the peo-
ple, who keenly feel a hurt and are sharply conscious of
a wrong. Such ideas, which bring great masses of men,
the repositories of ultimate political power, under the
leadership of charlatans and demagogues, are fraught
with danger; but they cannot be successfully combated
until political economy shall give some answer to the
great question which shall be consistent with all her
-teachings, and which shall commend itself -to the per-;
ceptions of the great masses of men.
. It must be -within the province of political economy
to give such an answer. For political economy is not
' a set of dogmas. It is the explanation of a certain set
of facts. It is the science which, in the sequence of cer-
tain phenomena, seeks to trace mutual relations and to
identify cause and effect, just as the physical - sciences
seek to do in other sets of phenomena. It lays its
foundations upon firm ground. The premises from
which it makes its deductions are truths which have the
highest sanction; axioms which we alT recognize; upon
12
INTEODUCTOBY
which we safely base the reasoning and actions of every-
day life, and w'hich may be reduced to the metaphysical
expression of the physical law that motion seeks the line
of least resistance — viz,, that men seek to gratify their
desires with the least exertion. Proceeding from a basis
thus assured, its processes, which consist simply in
identification and separation, have the same certainty.
In this sense it is as exact a science as geometry, which,
from similar truths relative to space, obtains its con-
clusions by similar means, and its conclusions when valid
should be as self-apparent. And although in the do-
main of political economy we cannot test our theories
by artificially produced combinations or conditions, as
may be done in some of the other sciences, yet we can
apply tests no less conclusive, by comparing societies
in which different conditions exist, or by, in imagination,
separating, combining, adding or eliminating forces or
factors of known direction,
I propose in the following pages to attempt to solve
by the methods of political economy the great problem
I have outlined, I propose to seek the law which associ-
ates poverty with progress, and increases want with
advancing wealth; and I believe that in the explanation
of this paradox we shall find the explanation of those
recurring seasons of industrial and commercial paralysis
which, viewed independently of their relations to more
general phenomena, seem so inexplicable. Properly
commenced and carefully pursued, such an investigation
must yield a conclusion that will stand every test, and
as truth, will correlate with all other truth. For in the
sequence of .phenomena there is np accident. Every
effect has a cause, and every fact implies a preceding
fact.
That political economy, as at present taught, does
not explain the persistence of poverty amid advancing
wealth in a manner which accords with the deep-seated
THE PROBLEM
13
perceptions of men; tliat the unquestionable truths which
it does teach are unrelated and disjointed; that it has
failed to make the progress in popular thought that
truth, even when unpleasant, must make; that, on the
contrary, after a century of cultivation, during which
it has engrossed the attention of some of the most subtle
and powerful intellects, it should be spurned by the
statesman, scouted by the masses, and relegated in the
opinion of many educated and thinking men to the rank
of a pseudo-science in which nothing is fixed or can
be fixed — ^must, it seems to me, be due not to any in-
ability of the science when properly pursued, but to
some false step in its premises, or overlooked factor in
its estimates. And as such mistakes are generally con-
cealed by the respect paid to authority, I propose in
this inquiry to take nothing for granted, but to bring
even accepted theories to the test of first principles, and
should they not stand the test, freshly .to interrogate
facts in the endeavor to discover their law.
I propose to beg no question, to shrink from no con-
clusion, but to follow truth wherever it may lead. Upon
us is the responsibility of seeking the law, for in the
very heart of om’ civilization- to-day women faint and
little children moan. But what that law may prove
to be is not our affair. If the conclusions that we
reach run counter to our prejudices, let us not flinch;
if they challenge institutions that have. long been deemed
wise and natural, let us not turn back.
BOOK I
WAGES AND CAPITAL
CHAPTER i.— THE CURRENT DOCTRINE— ITS INSUFMCIENCi:
CHAPTER n.— THE MEANING OF THE TERMS
CHAPTER m.— WAGES NOT DRAWN PROM CAPITAL, BUT PRO-
' DUCED BY THE Lii^OR
CHAPTER IV.— THE MAINTENANCE OF LABORERS NOT DRAWN
FROM CAPITAL
CHAPTER V.— THE REAL FUNCTIONS OP CAPITAL
He that is to follow philosophy must be a freeman in mind.
— Ptolemy.
CHAPTER I
THE CUKBENT DOCTRINE OE WAGES — ITS INSHEPICIBNCY
Reducing to its most compact form the problem we
have set out to investigate, let us examine, step by step,
. the explanation which political economy, as now accepted
by the best authority, gives of it.
The cause which produces poverty in the midst of
advancing wealth is evidently the cause which exhibits
itself in the tendency, everywhere recognized, of wages
to a minimum. Let us, therefore, put our inquiry into
this compact form:
Why, in spite of increase in productive power, do wages
tend to a minimum which vrill give but a bare living ?
The answer of the current political economy is, that
wages are fixed by the ratio between the number of
laborers and the amount of capital devoted to the em-
ployment of labor, and constantly tend tb the lowest
amount on which laborers will consent to live and repro-
duce, because the increase in the number of laborers
tends naturally to follow and overtake any increase in
capital. The increase of the divisor being thus held in
check only by the possibilities of the- quotient, the’ divi-
dend may be increased to infinity without greater result.
In current thought this doctrine holds all but undis-
put(?d sway. It bears the indorsement of the very high-
est names among the cultivators of political economy,
and though there have been attacks upon it, they are
17
18
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Booh 1.
generally more formal than real * It is assumed by
Buckle as the basis of his generalizations of universal
history. It is taught in all, or nearly all, the great Eng-
lish and American universities, and is laid down in
textbooks which aim at leading the masses to reason cor-
rectly upon practical affairs, while it seems to harmonize
with the new philosophy, which, having in a few years all
but conquered the scientific world, is now rapidly per-
meating the general mind.
Thus entrenched in the upper regions of thought, it is
in cruder form even more firmly rooted in what may be
styled the lower. Wliat gives to the fallacies of protec-
tion such a tenacious hold, in spite of their evident in-
consistencies and absurdities, is the idea that the sum to .
6e distributed in wages is in each community a fixed one,
which the competition of “foreign labor'’ must sit-ill
further subdivide. The same idea underlies most of the
theories which aim at the abolition of interest and
the restriction of competition, as the means whereby the
share of the laborer in the' general wealth can be in-
creased ; and it crops out in every direction among those
who are not thoughtful enough to have any theories, as
may be seen in the columns of newspapers and the
debates of legislative bodies.
* This seems to me true of Mr. Thornton’s objections, for while
he denies the existence of a predetermined wage fund, consisting
of a portion of capital set apart for, the purchase of labor, he yet
holds (which is the essential thing) that wages are drawn from
capital, and that increase or decrease of capital is increase or de-
crease of the fund available for the payment of wages. The most
vital attack upon the wage fund doctrine of which I know is , that
of Professor Francis A. "Walker (The Wages Question: New York,
187G), yet he admits that wages are in large part advanced from '
capital — which, so far as it goes, is all that the stanchest supporter
of the wage ftmd theory could claim— while he fully accepts the
Malthusian theory. Thus his practical conclusions in nowise differ
from those reached by expounders of the current theoiy.
Chap. I.
THE CURRENT DOCTRINE
19
And yet, widely accepted and deeply rooted as it is,
it seems to me that this theoiy does not tally with
obvious facts. For, if wages depend- upon the ratio be-
tween the amount of labor, seeking employment and the
amount, of 'capital devoted to its employment, the rela-
tive'scarcity or abundance of one factor must mean the
relative abundance or scarcity of the other. Thus,
capital must be relatively abundant where wages are
high, and relatively scarce where wages are low. Now,
as the capital used in paying wages must largely consist
of the capital constantly seeking investment, the cur-
rent rate of interest must be the measure of its relative
abundance or scarcity. So, if it , be true that wages
depend upon the ratio between the amount of labor
seeking employment and the capital devoted to its em-
ployment, then high wages, the mark of the relative
scarcity of labor, must be accompanied by low interest,
the mark of the relative abundance of capital, and
reversely, low wages must be' accompanied by high
interest.
This is not the fact, but the contrary. Eliminating
from interest the element of insurance, and regarding
only interest proper, or the return for the use of capital;
is it not a general truth that interest is high where and
when wages are high, and low where and when wages
are low? Both wages and interest have .been higher
in the United States than in England, in the Pacific
than in the Atlantic States. Is it not a notorious fact
that where labor flows for higher wages, capital also
flows for higher interest? Is it not true that wherever
there has been a general rise or fall in wages there has
been at the same time a similar rise or fall in interest?
In California, for instance, when wages were higher
than anywhere else in the world, so also was interest
higher. Wages and interest have in California gone
down together. When comrnon wages were §5 a day.
20
WAGES AKD CAPITAL
Book I.
the ordinary bank rate of interest was twenty-four per
cent, per annum, Now that common wages are $2 or
$2,50 a day, the ordinary bank rate is from ten to
twelve per cent.
Now, this broad, general fact, that wages are higher
in new countries, where capital is relatively scarce,
than in old countries, where capital is relatively abun-
dant, is too glaring to be ignored. And although very
lightly touched upon, it is noticed by the expounders
of the current political economy. The manner in which
it is noticed proves what I say, that it is utterly incon-
sistent with the accepted theory of wages, 'Por in ex-
plaining it such writers as Mill, Fawcett, and Price
virtually give up the theory of wages upon which, in
the same treatises, they formally insist. Though they
declare that wages are fixed by the ratio between capital
and laborers, they explain the higher wages and interest
of new countries by the greater relative production of
wealth. I shall hereafter show that this is not the fact,
but that, on the contrary, the production of wealth is
relatively larger in old and densely populated countries
than in new and sparsely populated countries. But at
present I merely wish to point out the inconsistency.
For to say that the higher wages of new countries are
due to greater proportionate production, is clearly to
make the ratio with production, and not the ratio with
capital, the determinator of wages.
Though this inconsistency does not seem to have been
perceived by the class of writers to whom I refer, it has
been noticed by one of the most logical of the expound-
ers of the current political economy. Professor Cairnes*
endeavors in a very ingenious way to reconcile the fact
with the theory, by assuming that in new countries.
♦Some Leading Principles of Political Economy Newly, Ex-
pounded, Chapter 1, Part 2.
Chap. 1.
THE CUIIRENT DOCTKIHE
21
■where industry is generally directed to the production of
food and what in manufactures is called raw material, a"
much larger proportion of the capital used in produc-
tion is devoted to the payment of wages than in older
countries where a greater part must be expended in
machinery and material, and thus, in the new country,
though capital is scarcer, .and interest is higher, the
amount determined to the payment of wages is really
larger, and wages are also higher. For instance, of
§100,000 devoted in an old country to manufactures,
$80,000 would probably be expended for buildings, ma-
chinery and the purchase of materials, leaving but
$20,000 to be paid out in wages ; whereas in a new
country, of $30,000 devoted to agriculture, etc., not
more than $5,000 would be required for tools, etc., leav-
ing $25,000 to be distributed in wages. In this way it
is explained that the wage fund may be comparatively
large where capital is comparatively scarce, and high
wages and high interest accompany each other.
In what follows I think I shall be able to show that
this explanation is based upon a total misapprehension
of the relations of labor to capital — a fundamental error
as to the fund from which wages are drawn; but at pres-
ent it is necessary only to point out that the connection
in the fluctuation of wages and interest in the same
. countries and in the same branches of industry cannot
thus be explained. In those alternations known as ‘'good
times” and “hard times” a brisk demand for labor and
good wages is always accompanied by a brisk demand
• for capital and stiff rates of .interest. While, when
■ laborers cannot find employment and wages droop, there
is always an accumulation of capital seeking investment
•at low rates.* The present depression has been no less
* Times of commercial panic 'are marked by high rates of dis-
count, but this is evidently not a high rate of interest, properly
so called, but a high rate of insurance against risk.
WAGES AND CAPITAI.
• Boole I.
OO
marked by want of employment and distress among
the working classes than by the accumulation of un-
employed capital in all th'e great centers, and by nomi-
nal rates of interest on undoubted security. Thus,
under conditions which admit of no explanation con-
sistent with the current theory, do we find high interest
coinciding with high wages, and low interest with low
wages — capital seemingly scarce when labor is scarce,
and abundant when labor is abundant.
All these well known facts, which coincide with each
other, point to a relation between wages and interest,
but it is to a relation of conjunction, not of opposition.
Evidently they are utterly inconsistent with the theory
that wages are determined by the ratio between labor
and capital, or any part of capital.
How, then, it will be asked, could such a theory arise?
How is it that it has been accepted by a succession of
economists, from the time of Adam Smith to the present
day?
If we examine the reasoning by which in, current
treatises this theory of wages is supported, we see at
once that it is not an induction from observed facts,
but a deduction from a previously assumed theory —
viz,, that wages are drawn from capital. It being
assumed that capital is the source of wages, it neces-
sarily follows that the gross amount of wages must be
limited by the amount of capital devoted to the em-
ployment of labor, and hence that the amount individual
laborers can receive must be determined by the ratio
between their number and the amount of capital exist-
ing for their recompense.* This reasoning is valid, but
*For instance McCulloch (Note* "VT to Wealth of Nations)
says; “That portion of the capital or wealth of a country which
the employers of labor intend to or are willing to pay out in the
purchase of labor, may be much larger at one time than another.
But whatever may be its absolute magnitude, it obviously forma
Chap i. THE CUERENT DOCTRINE 23
the conclusion, as we have- seen, ' does not correspond
with the facts. The fault, therefore, must be in the
premises. Let us see! '
I am aware that the theorem that -wages are drawn
from capital is one of' the most fundardental and appar-
ently best settled of current political economy, and that
it has been accepted as axiomatic by all the great think-
ers ■who have devoted their powers to the elucidation
of the science. Nevertheless, I think it can be demon-
strated to be a fundamental error — the fruitful parent
of a long series of errors, which vitiate most important
practical conclusions. This demonstration I am about
to attempt. It is necessary that it should be clear. and
conclusive, for a doctrine upon which so much important
reasoning is based, which is supported by such a weight
of authority, which is so plausible in itself, and is so
liable to recur in different -forms, cannot be safely
brushed aside in a paragraph. .
The proposition I’ shah endeavor to prove, is:
That wages, .instead of , being drawn from capital, are
in reality drawn from the product:of the labor for which
they are paid*
Now, inasmuch as the current thesory that wages are
the only source from which any portion of the wages of labor
can be derived. No other fund is in existence from which the
laborer, as such, can draw a single shilling. And hende it follows
that the average rate of wages, or the share of the national capi-
tal appropriated to the etaployment of labor falling, at an aver-
, age, to each laborer, must entirely depend on its amount as
compared with the number of those amongst whom it has to be
divided.” Similar citations might be made from all the stand-
ard economists.
* We are speaking of labor expended in production, to which
it is best for the sahe of simplicity to confine the inquiry. Any
question which may arise in the reader’s mind as to wages for
unproductive services bad best therefore be deferred.
24
WAGES AND CAPITAL
. Book 1.
drawn from capital also holds that capital is reimbursed
from production, this at first glance may seem a distinc-
tion without a difference — a mere change in terminology,
to discuss which would be but to add to those unprofit-
able disputes that render so much that has been written
upon politico-economic subjects as barren and worthless
as the controversies of the various learned societies
about the true reading of the inscription on the stone
that Mr, Pickwick found. But that it is much more
than a formal distinction will be apparent when it is
considered that upon the difference betw’een the two
propositions are built up all the current theories as
to the relations of capital and labor; that from it are
deduced doctrines that, themselves regarded as axio-
matic, bound, direct, and govern the ablest minds in
the discussion of the most momentous questions. For,
upon the assumption that wages are dravm directly
from capital, and not from the product of the labor, is
based, not only the doctrine that wages depend upon
the ratio between capital and labor, but the doctrine
that industry is limited by capital — ^that capital must
be accumulated before labor is employed, and labor
cannot be employed except as capital is accumulated;
the doctrine that every increase of capital gives or is
capable of giving additional employment to industry;
the doctrine that the conversion of circulating capital
into fixed capital lessens the fund applicable to the
maintenance of labor; the doctrine that more laborers
can be employed at low than at high wages; the doctrine
that capital applied to .agriculture will maintain more
laborers than if applied to manufactures; the doctrine
that profits are high or low as wages are low or high, or
that they depend upon the cost of the subsistence of
laborers; together with such paradoxes as that a demand
for commodities is not a demand for labor, or that cer-
tain commodities may be increased in cost by a reduc-
Cftap. 7. THE CUERENT DOCTRINE 25
tion in wages or diminished in cost by an increase in
wages.
In short, all the teachings of the current political
economy, in the widest and most important part of its
domain, are based more or less directly upon the assump-
tion that labor is maintained and paid out of e'xisting
capital before the product which constitutes the ultimate
object is secured. If it be shown that this 'is an error,
and that on the contrary the maintenance and payment
of labor do not even temporarily trench on capital, but
are directly drawn from the product of the labor, then
all this vast superstructure is left without support and
must fall. And so likewise must fall, the vulgar theories
which also have their base in the belief that the sum
to be distributed in wages is a fixed one, the individual
shares in which must necessarily be decreased by an
increase in the number of laborers.
The difference between the current theory and the one
I advance is, in fact, similar to that between the mer-
cantile theory of international exchanges and that with
which Adam Smith supplanted it. Between the theor3r
that commerce is the exchange of commodities for
money, and the theory that it is the exchange of com-
modities for commodities, there may seem no real dif-
ference when it is' remembered that the adherents of the
mercantile theory did not assume that money had any
other use than as it could be exchanged for commodi-
ties. Yet, in the practical application of these two
theories, there arises all the difference between rigid
governmental protection and free trade.
If I have, said enough to show the reader the ultimate
irhportance of the reasoning through which I am about
to ask him to. follow me, it will not be necessa.ry to
• apologize in advance either for simplicity or prolixity.
In arraigning a doctrine of such importance — a doctrine
26 WAGES .AND CAPITAL Boot/.
supported by such a weight of authority, it is necessary
to be both clear and thorough.
Were it not for this I should be tempted to dismiss
with a sentence the assumption that wages are drawn
from capital. For all the vast superstructure which
the current political economy builds upon this doctrine
is in truth based upon a foundation which has been
merely taken for granted, without the slightest at-
tempt to distinguish the apparent from the real. Be-
cause wages are generally paid in money, and in many
of the operations of production are paid before the
product is fully completed, or can be utilized, it is in-
ferred that wages are drawn from pre-existing capital,
and, therefore, that industry is limited by capital —
that is to say that labor cannot be employed until
capital has been accumulated, and can only be employed
to the extent that capital has been accumulated.
Yet in the very treatises in which the limitation of in-
dustry by capital is laid down without reservation and
made the basis for the most important reasonings and
elaborate theories, we are told that capital is stored-
up or accumulated labor — “that part of wealth which
is saved to assist future production.” If we substitute
for the word “capital” this definition of the word, the
proposition carries its own refutation, for that labor
cannot be employed until the results of labor are saved
becomes too absurd for discussion.
Should we, however, with this reductio ad absurdum,
attempt to close the argument, we should probably be
met with the explanation, not that the first laborers were
supplied by Providence with the capital necessary to sef
them to work, but that the proposition merely refers to
a state of society in which production has become a
complex operation, . . -
But the fundamental truth, that in all econorbic rea-
soning must be firmly grasped, and never let go, is that
Chap. I. ■ THE CtJIlRENT DOCTRINE " 27
society in its most highly developed form is but an
elaboration of society in its rudest beginnings, and that
principles obvious in the simpler relations of men are
merely disguised and not abrogated or reversed by the
more .intricate relations that result from the division
of labor and the use of complex tools and methods. The
steam grist mill, with its complicated machinery ex-
hibiting every diversity of motion, is simply what the
rude stone mortar dug up from .an ancient river bed
was in its day — an instrument for grinding corn. And
every man engaged in it, whether tossing wood into the
furnace, running the engine, dressing ^ stones, printing
sacks or . keeping books, is really devoting his. labor
to the same purpose that the prehistoric savage did
when he, used his mortar — the preparation of grain for
human food.
And so, if we reduce to their lowest terms all the
complex operations of modern production, we see that
each individual who takes part in this infinitely 'sub-
divided and intricate network of production and ex-
change is really doing what the primeval man did when
he climbed ‘.the trees for fruit or followed the receding
tide for shell-fish — endeavoring to obtain from nature
by the exertion of his powers the satisfaction of his
desires. If we keep this firmly in mind, if we look
upon production as a whole— as the co-operation of all
embraced in any of its great groups to satisfy the vari-
ous desires of each, we plainly see that the reward
each obtains for his exertions comes as truly and as
.directly from nature as the. result of that exertion, as
did that of the first man.
To illustrate: In the simplest state of which we 'can
conceive, each man digs his own bait and catches his
own fish. The advantages of the division of labor soon
become apparent, and one digs bait while the others
fish. Yet evidently the one who digs bait is in reality
28
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Book 7>
doing as much toward the catching of fish as any of
those who actually take the fish. So when the advan-
tages of canoes are discovered, and instead of all going
a-fishing, one stays behind and makes and repairs
canoes, the canoe-maker is in reality devoting his labor
to the taking of fish as much as the actual fishermen,
and the fish which he eats at night when the fishermen
come home are as truly the product of his labor as of
theirs. And thus when the division of labor is fairly
inaugurated, and instead of each attempting to satisfy
all of his wants by direct resort to nature, one fishes,
another hunts, a third picks berries, a fourth gathers
fruit, a fifth makes tools, a sixth builds huts, and a
seventh prepares clothing — each one is to the extent he
exchanges the direct product of his own labor for the
direct product of the labor of others really applying
his own labor to the production of the things he uses
— is in effect satisfying his particular desires by the
exertion of his particular powers; that is to say, what
he receives he in reality produces. If he digs roots
and exchanges them for venison, he is in effect as truly
the procurer of the venison as though he had gone in
chase of the deer and left the huntsman to dig his own
roots. The common expression, “1 made so and so,’'
signifying “1 earned so and so,” or “1 earned money
with which I purchased so and so,” is, economically
speaking, not metaphorically but literally true. Earning
is making.
Now, if we follow these principles, obvious enough
in a simpler state of society, thrpugh the complexities
of the state we call civilized, we shall see clearly that
in every -case in which labor is exchanged for com-
modities,- production really precedes enjoyment; that
wages are the earnings — ^that is to say, the makings of
labor — ^not.the advances of capital, and that the laborer
who receives his wages in money (coined or printed,
Cfiop. J. ■ THE CURRENT DOCTRINE 29
it may be, before his labor commenced) really receives
in return for the addition his labor has made to the
general stock of wealth, a draft upon that general stock,
which he ma^’’ utilize in anj’- particular form of wealth
that will best satisfy his desires; and that neither the
money, which is but the draft, nor the particular form
of wealth which he useu it to call for, represents advances
of capital for his maintenance, but on the contrary
represents the wealth, or a- portion of the wealth, his
labor has already added to the general stock.
Keeping these principles in view we see that the
draughtsman, who, shut up in some dingy office on the
banks of the Thames, is drawing the plans for a great
marine engine, is in reality devoting his labor to the
production of bread and meat as truly • as though he
were garnering the gi*ain in California or swinging a
lariat' on a La Plata pampa; that he is" as truly making
his own clothing as though he were shearing sheep in
Australia or weaving cloth in Paisley, and just as ef-
fectually producing the claret he drinks at dinner as
though he gathered the grapes on the banks of the
Garonne. • The miner who, two thousand feet under
ground in the heart of the Comstock, is digging out
silver ore, is, in effect, by virtue of a thousand ex-
changes, harvesting crops in valleys five thousand feet
nearer the earth’s center; chasing the whale through
Arctic icefields; plucking tobacco leaves in Virginia;
picking coffee berries in Honduras; cutting sugar cane
on the Hawaiian Islands; gathering cotton in Georgia
or weaving it in Manchester or Lowell; making quaint
wooden toys for his children in the Hartz Mountains;
or plucking amid the green and' gold of Los Angeles
orchards the oranges which, when his shift is relieved,
he will take home, to his sick wife. The wages which he
^receives on Saturday night at the mouth of the shaft,
■nffiat are they but the certificate to all the world that
so
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Book 1,
he has done these things — the primary exchange in the
long series which transmutes his labor into the things he
has really been laboring for?
t
All this is clear when looked at in this way; but to
meet this fallacy in all its strongholds and lurking places
we must change our investigation from the deductive
to the inductive form. Let us now see, if, beginning
with facts and tracing their relations, we arrive at the
same conclusions as are thus obvious when, beginning
with first principles, we trace their exemplification in
complex facts.
CHAPTER II
THE MEANING OF THE TERMS
Before proceeding further in our inquiry, let us make
sure of the meaning of our terms, for indistinctness in
their use must inevitably produce ambiguity and m-
determinateness in reasoning. Not only is it requisite
in economic reasoning to give to such words as “wealth,”
“capital,” “rent,” “wages,” and the like, a much more
definite sense than they bear in common ‘discourse, but,
unfortunate^, even in political economy there is, as to
some of these terms, no certain meaning assigned by
common consent, different writers giving to the same
term different meanings, and the same writers often
using a term in different senses. Nothing can add to
the force of what has been said by so many eminent
authors as to the importance of clear and precise defini-
tions, save the example, not an infrequent one, of the
same authors falling into grave errors from the very
cause they warned against. And nothing so shows the
importance of language in thought as the spectacle of
even acute thinkers basing important conclusions upon
the use of the same word in, varying , senses. , I shall
endeavor to avoid these dangers. It will be my effort
throughout, as any term becomes of importance, to
state clearly what I mean by it, and to use it in that
sense and in no other. Let me ask the reader to note
and to bear in mind the definitions thus .given, as other'
wise I cannot hope to make myself properly, understood-
? shall not attempt to attach arbitrary meanings to
31
32
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Book I.
words, or to coin terms, even when it would be con-
venient to do so, but shall conform to usage as closely
as is possible, only endeavoring so to fix the meaning of
words that they may clearly express thought.
What we have now on hand is to discover whether,
as a matter of fact, wages are drawn from capital. As
a preliminary, let us settle what we mean by wages and
what we mean by capital. To the former word a suf-
ficiently definite meaning has been given by economic
writers, but the ambiguities which have attached to the
use of the latter in political economy will require a
detailed examination.
As used in common discomse 'Vages'' means a com-
pensation paid to a hired person for his services; and
we speak of one man "working for wages,^^ in contra-
distinction to another who is "working for himself.”
The use of the term is still further narrowed by the
habit of applying it solely to compensation paid for
manual labor. We do not speak of the wages of pro-
fessional men, managers or clerks, but of their fees,
commissions, or salaries. Thus the common meaning
of the word wages is the compensation paid to a hired
person for manual labor. But in political economy the
word wages has a much wider meaning, and includes all
returns for exertion. For, as political economists explain,
the three agents or factors in production are land, labor,
and capital, and that part of the produce which goes to
the second of these factors is by them styled wages, -
Thus the term labor includes all human exertion in
the production of wealth, and wages, being that part of
the produce which goes to labor, includes all reward
for such exertion. There is, therefore, in the politico-
economic sense of the term wages no distinction as to
the kind of labor, or as to whether its reward is re-
ceived through an employer or not, but wages- means the
return received for the exertion of labjor, as distin-
Chap. II. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS 33
guished from the return received for the use of capital,
and the return received by the landholder for the use
of land. The man who cultivates the soil, for himself
receives his wages in its produce, just as, if he uses, his
own capital and. owns his own land, he may also receive
interest and rent; the hunter’s wages are the game he
kills; the fisherman’s wages are the fish he takes. The
gold washed out by the self-employing gold-digger is
as much his wages as the money paid to the hired coal
miner by the purchaser of his labor,* *and, as Adam
Smith shows, the high profits of retail storekeepers are
in large part wages, being the recompense of their labor
and not of their capital. In short, whatever is received
as the result or reward of exertion is “wages.”
This is all it is now necessary to note as to “wages,”
but it is important to keep this in mind. For in the
standard economic works this sense of the term wages
is recognized with greater or less clearness only to be
subsequently ignored.
But it is more difiicult to clear away from the idea of
capital the ambiguities that beset it, and *to fix the
scientific use of the term. In general discourse, all sorts
of things that have a value or will yield a return are
vaguely spoken of as capital, while economic writers
vary so widely that the term can hardly be said to have'
a fixed meaning. Let us compare with each other the
definitions of a few representative writers:
“That part of a man’s stock,”- says Adam Smith
(Book II, Chap. I), “which he expects to afford him a
revenue, is called his capital,” and the capital of a
country or society, he goes on to say, consists of (1)
machines and instruments of trade which facilitate and
*This was recognized in common speech in California, where
the placer miners styled their earnings their “wages,” and spoke
of making high wages or low wages according to the amount of
gold taken out.
‘ WAGES AXD CAPITAL Book I.
abridge labor; (2) buildings, not mere dwellings, but
which may be considered instruments of trade — ^such
as shops, farmhouses, etc,; (3) improvements of land
which better fit it for tillage or culture; (4) the ac-
quired and useful abilities of all the inhabitants; (5)
money; (6) provisions in the hands of producers and
dealers, from the sale of which they expect to derive
a profit; (7) the material of, or partially completed,
manufactured articles still in the hands of producers
or dealers; (8) ‘completed articles still in the hands 'of
producers or dealers. The first four of these he styles
fixed capital, and the last four circulating capital, a dis-
tinction of which it is not necessary to our purpose to
take any note.
Ricardo’s definition is:
"Capital is that part of the wealth of a country which is em-
ployed in production, and consists of food, clothing, tools, raw
materials, machinery, etc., necessary to give effect to labor,”-—
Principles of Political Economy, Chapter V.
This definition, it will be seen, is very different from
that of Adam Smith, as it excludes many of the things
which he includes — as acquired talents, articles of mere
taste or luxury in the possession of producers or deal-
ers; and includes some things he excludes— such as food,,
clothing, etc., in the possession of the consumer,
McCulloch’s definition is:
"The capital of a nation really comprises all those portions of
the produce of industry existing in it that may be directly em-
ployed either to support human existence or to facilitate pro-
duction.”— Notes on Wealth of Nations, Book 11, Chap. 1.
This, definition follows , the line of Ricardo’s, but is
wider. While it excludes everything that is not capable
of aiding production, it includes everything that is so
capable, without reference to actual use or necessity for.
use — ^the horse drawing a pleasure carriage being, ac- .
Chap. II. THE AIEANING OF .THE TERMS 35
cording to McCulloch’s view, as he expressly states,
as much capital as the horse drawing a plow, because he
may, if need arises, be used to draw a plow.
John Stuart Mill, following the same general line as
Ricardo and McCulloch, makes neither the use nor the
’ capability of use, but the determination to use, the test
of capital. He says:
“WKatever things are destined to supply productive labor with
the shelter, protection, tools and materials which the work re-
quires, and to. feed and otherwise maintain the laborer during the
process, are capital.” — Principles of Political Economy, Book I,
Chap. IV.
These quotations sufBciently illustrate the divergence
of the masters. Among minor authors the variance is
still greater, as a few examples will suffice to show.
Professor Wayland, whose “Elements of Political
Economy” has long been a favorite text-book in Amer-
ican educational institutions, where there has-been any
pretense of teaching political economy, gives this lucid
definition:
“The word capital is used in two senses. In relation to product
it means any substance on which industry is to be exerted. In
relation to industry, the material on which industry is about to
confer value,, that on which it has conferred value; the instru-
ments which are used for the conferring of value, as well as the
means of sustenance by which -the being is supported while he is
engaged in performing the operation.” — Elements of Political
Economy, Book I, Chap. 1. i
Henry C. Carey, the American apostle of protection-
ism, defines capital as “the instrument by which man
obtains mastery over nature, including in it the physical
and mental powers of man himself.” Professor Perry,
a Massachusetts free trader, very properly^ objects to
this that it hopelessly confuses the boundaries between
capital and labor, and then himself hopelessly con-
fuses the boundaries between capital and land by,de-
36
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Book I.
fining capital as "any valuable thing outside of man
himself from whose use springs a pecuniary increase or
profit.” An English economic writer of high standing,
Mr. Wm. Thornton, begins an elaborate examination
of the relations of labor and capital ("On Labor”) by
stating that he will include land with capital, which is
very much as if one who proposed to teach algebra
should begin with the declaration that he would con-
sider tfie signs plus and minus as meaning the same
thing and having the same value. An American writer,
also of high standing, Professor Francis A. Walker,
makes the same declaration in his elaborate book on
"The Wages Question.” Another English writer, N.
A. Nicholson ("The Science of Exchanges,” London.
1873), seems to cap the climax of absurdity by declar-
ing in one paragraph (p. 26) that "capital must of
course be accumulated by saving,” and in the very next
paragraph stating that "the land which 'produces a crop,
the plow which turns the soil, the labor which secures
the produce, and the produce itself, if a material profit
is to be derived from its employment, are all alike
capital.” But how land and labor are to be accumu-
lated by saving them he nowhere condescends to ex-
plain. In the same way a standard American writer,
Professor Amasa Walker (p. 66, "Science of Wealth”),
first declares that capital arises from the net savings of
labor and then immediately afterward declares that
land is capital.
I might go on for pages, citing contradictory and
self-contradictory definitions. But it would only weary
the reader. It is unnecessary to multiply quotations.
Those already given are sufficient to show how wide a
difference exists as to the comprehension- of the term-
capital. Any one who wants further illustration of the
"confusion worse confounded” which exists on this sub-
ject among the professors of political economy may find
Cftap. II.
THE MEANING OF THE TEEMS
37
it in any library where the works of these professors
are ranged side by side.
, Now, it makes little difference what name we give to
things, if when we use the name we always keep in
view the same things and no others. But the difficulty
arising in economic reasoning from these vague and
varying definitions of capital is that it is only in the
premises of reasoning that the term is used in the pe-
culiar sense assigned by the definition, while in the
practical conclusions that are reached it is always used,
or at least it is always understood, in one general and
idefinite sense. When, for instance, it is said that wages
are drawn from capital, the word capital is understood
in the same sense as when we speak of the scarcity or
abundance, the increase or decrease,' the destruction or
increment, of capital — a commonly understood and defi-
nite sense which separates capital from the other factors
of production, land and labor, and also separates it
from like things used merely for gratification. In fact,
most people understand well enough what capital is
until they begin to define it, and I think their works
will show that the economic writers who differ so widely
in their definitions use the term in this commonly un-
derstood sense in all cases except in their definitions
and the reasoning based on them.
This common sense of the term is that of wealth de-
voted to procuring more wealth. Dr. Adam Smith cor-
rectly expresses tliis common idea when he says : “That
.’part of a man’s stock which he expects to afford him
revenue is called his capital.” And the capital of a
community is evidently the sum of such individual
stocks, or that part of the aggregate stock which is ex-
pected- to procure more wealth. This also is the deriva-
tive sense of the term. The word "capital, as philologists
trace it,, comes down to us from a time when wealth was
estimated in cattle, and a man’s income depended upon
88
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Book L
the number of head he could keep for their increase.
The difficulties which beset the use of the word capital,
as an exact term, and which are 'even more strik-
ingly exemplified in current political and social discus-
sions than in the definitions of economic writers, arise
from two facts — first, that certain classes of things, the
possession of which to the individual is precisely equiva-
lent to the possession of capital, are not part of the
capital of the community; and, second, that things of
the same kind may or may not be capital, according to
the purpose to "which they are devoted.
With a little care as to these points, there should be'
no difficulty in obtaining a sufficiently clear and fixed
idea of what the term capital as generally used properly
includes; such an idea as will enable us to say what
things are capital and what are not, and to use the
word without ambiguity or slip.
Land, labor, and capital are the three factors of pro-
duction. If we remember that capital is thus a term
used in contradistinction to land and labor, we at once
see that nothing properly included under either one of
these terms can be properly classed as capital. , The
term land necessarily includes, not merely the surface
of the earth as distinguished from the water and the
air, but the whole material universe outside of man
himself, for it is only by having access to land, from
which his very body is drawn, that man can come in
contact with or use nature. The term land embraces, in
short, all natural materials, forces, and opportunities,
and, therefore, nothing that is freely supplied by nature
can be properly classed as capital. A fertile field, a
rich vein of ore, a falling stream which, supplies power,
may give to the possessor advantages equivalent to the
possession of capital, but to class such things as capital
would be to put an end to the distinction between land
and capital, and, so far as they relate to each other.
Chav. II. the meaning OP THE TERMS 39
to make the two terms meaningless. The, term labor,-
in like manner, includes all human exertion, ' and hence
hunaan powers whether natural or acquired can never
properly be classed as capital. In common parlance
we often speak' of a man’s knowledge, skill, or industry
as constituting his capital; but this is evidently a meta-
phorical use of language that must he eschewed in rea-
soning that aims at exactness. • Superiority in such
qualities may augment the income of an individual
just as capital would, and an increase in the knowledge,
skill, or industry of a community may have the same
effect in increasing its production as would an increase
of capital; but this effect is due to the increased power
of .labor and not to capital. Increased velocity may
give to the impact of a cannon ball the same effect as
increased weight, yet, nevertheless, weight is one thing
and' velocity another.
Thus we must exclude from the category of capital
everything that may be included either as land or labor.
Doing so, there remain only things which are neither
land nor labor, but which have resulted from the union
of these two original factors of production. Nothing
can be properly capital that does not consist of these —
that is to say, nothing can be capital that is not wealth.
But it is from ambiguities in the use of this inclusive
term wealth that many of the ambiguities which beset
the term capital are derived.
As’ commonly used the word “wealth” is applied to
anything having an exchange value. But when used as
a term of political economy it must be limited to a
much more definite meaning, because many things are
commonly, spoken of as wealth which in taking account
of collective or general wealth cannot be considered as
wealth at all. Such things have an exchange value, and
are commonly spoken of as wealth, insomuch as they
represent as between individuals, or between sets o^f
40
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Book!,
individuals, the power of obtaining wealth; but they
are not truly wealth, inasmuch as their increase or de-
crease does not affect the sum of wealth. Such are
bonds, mortgages, promissory notes, bank bills, or other
stipulations for the transfer of wealth. Such are slaves,
whose value represents merely the power of one class
to appropriate the earnings of another class. Such are
lands, or other natural opportunities, the value of which
' is but the result of the acknowledgment in favor of
certain persons of an exclusive right to their use, and
which represents merely the power thus given to the
owners to demand a share of the wealth produced by
those who use them. Increase in the amount of bonds,
mortgages, notes, or bank bills cannoji increase the
wealth of the community that includes as well those who
promise to pay as those who are entitled to receive.
The enslavement of a part of their number could not
increase the wealth of a people, for what the enslavers
gained the enslaved would lose. Increase in land values
does not represent increase in the common wealth, for
what land owners gain by higher prices, the tenants
or purchasers who must pay them will lose. And all this
relative wealth, which, in common thought and speech,
in legislation and law, is undistinguished from actual
wealth, could, without the destruction or consumption
of anything more than a few drops of ink and a piece of
paper, be utterly annihilated. By enactment of the
sovereign political power debts might be canceled, slaves
emancipated, and land resumed as the common prop- ^
erty of the whole people, without the aggregate wealth
being diminished by the value of a pinch of snuff, for
what some would lose others would gain. There would
be no more destruction of w^ealth than there was crea-
tion of w^ealth w^hen Elizabeth Tudor enriched her
favorite courtiers by the grant of monopolies, or when
Chap. II.
THE MEANING OF THE TERMS
41
Boris Godoonof made Russian peasants merchantable
property.
All things which have an exchange value are, there-
iore, not wealth, in the only sense in which the term
can be used in political economy. Only such things
can be wealth the production of which increases and
the destruction of which decreases the aggregate of
wealth. If we consider what these -things are, and what
their nature is, we shall have no difficulty in defining
wealth.
When we speak of a community increasing in wealth
— as when we say that England has increased in wealth
since the accession of Victoria, or that California is a
wealthier country than when it was a Mexican terri-
tory— ^we do not mean to say that there is more land, or
that the natural powers of the land are greater, or that
there are more people, for when we wish to express that '
idea we speak of increase of population; or that the
debts or dues owing by some of these people to others
of their number have increased; but we mean that there
is an increase of certain tangible things, having an ac-
tual and not merely a relative value — such as buildings,
cattle, tools, machinery, agricultural and mineral prod-
ucts, manufactured goods* ships, wagons, furniture, and
the like. The increase of such things constitutes an
increase of wealth ; their decrease is a lessening of
wealth ; • and the community that, in proportion to its
numbers, has most of such things is the wealthiest com-
munity. The common character of these" things is that
they consist of natural substances or products which
have been adapted by human labor to human use or
gratification, their ’’value depending pn the amount of
labor which upon the average would be required to
produce things of like kind.
Thus wealth, as alone the term can be used in politi-
cal economy, consists of natural products that have'
4:2 •WAGES AND CAPITAL Boohl
been secured, moved, combined, separated, or in other
ways modified by human exertion, so as to fit them for
the gratification of human desires. It is, in other words,
labor impressed upon matter in such a way as to store
up, as the heat of the sun is stored up in coal, the
power of human labor to minister to human desires.
Wealth is not the sole object of labor, for labor is also
expended in ministering directly to desire; but it is the
object and result of what we call productive labor —
that is, labor which gives value to material things.
Nothing which nature supplies to man without his labor
is wealth, nor yet does the expenditure of labor result
in wealth unless there is a tangible product which has
and retains the power of ministering to desire.
Now, as capital is wealth devoted to a certain pur-
pose, nothing can be capital which does not fall within
this definition of wealth. By recognizing and keeping
this in mind, we get' rid of misconceptions which vitiate
all reasoning in which they are permitted, which befog
popular thought, and have led into mazes of contra-
diction even acute thinkers.
But though all capital is wealth, all wealth is not
capital. Capital is only a part of wealth — ^that part,
namely, which is devoted to the aid of production. It
is in drawing this line between the wealth that is and
the wealth that is not capital that a second class of
misconceptions are likely to occur.
The errors which I have been pointing out, and which
consist in confounding with wealth and capital things
essentially distinct, or which have but a relative exist-
"ence, are now merely vulgar errors,; They are wide-
spread, it is true, and have a deep root, being held, not
merely by the less educated classes, but seemingly by
a large majority of those who in such advanced coun-
tries as iEngland and the United States mold and guide
' public opinion, make the laws in Parliaments, Con-
43
Chap. II. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS'
gresses and Legislatures, and administer them in the
courts. They crop out, moreover, in the disquisitions
of many of those flabby writers who have burdened the
press and darkened counsel by numerous volumes which
are dubbed political economy, and which pass as text-
books with the ignorant and as authority with those who
do not think for themselves. Nevertheless, they are
only vulgar errors, inasmuch as they receive no counte-
nance from the best writers on political economy. By
one' of those', lapses which flaw his great work and strik-
ingly evince the imperfections of the highest talent,
Adam Smith counts as capital certain personal qualities,
an inclusion which is not consistent with his original
definition of capital as stock from which revenue is
expected. But this error has been avoided by liis most
eminent successors, and in the definitions, previously
■given, of Ricardo, McCulloch, and Mill, it is not in-
volved. Neither in their definitions nor in that of
Smith is involved the vulgar error - which confounds ,
as real capital things which are only relatively capital,
such as evidences of debt, land values, etc. But as to
things which are really wealth, their definitions differ
from each other, and widely from that of Smith, as to
what is and what is not to be considered , as capital.
The stock of a jeweler would, for instance, be included '
■ as capital by the definition of Smith, and the food or
clothing in possession of a laborer would be excluded.
But the definitions of Ricardo and McCulloch would ex-
clude the stock of the jeweler, as would also that of
Mill, if' understood as most persons would understand
the words I have quoted. But as explained by him, it
is neither the nature nor the destination of the things
themselves which determines whether they are or are
not capital, but the intention of the owner to devote
either the things or the value received from their sale
to the supply of productive labor with tools, materials,
44
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Book I.
and maintenance. All the.se definitions, however, agree
in including as capital the provisions and clothing of the
laborer, which Smith excludes.
Let us consider these three definitions, which repre-
sent the be.st teachings of current political economy:
To McCulloch's definition of capital as ^'all those por-
tions of the produce of industry that may be directly
employed either to support human existence or to facili-
tate production," there are obvious objections. One
may pass along any principal street in a thriving tovTi
or city and see stores filled with all sorts of valuable
things, which, though they cannot be employed either
to support human existence or to facilitate production,
undoubtedly constitute part of the capital of the store-
keepers and part of the capital of the community. And
he can also see products of industry capable of. sup-
porting human existence or facilitating production being ..
consumed in ostentation or useless luxmy. Surely these',
though they might, do not constitute part of capital.
Ricardo’s definition avoids including as capital things
which might be but are not employed in production, by
covering only such as are employed. But it is open to
the first objection made to McCulloch’s. If only wealth
that may be, or that is, or that is destined to be, used
in .supporting producers, or assisting production, is cap-
ital, then the stocks of jewelers, toy dealers, tobacco-
nists, confectioners, picture dealers, etc. — ^in fact, all
stocks that consist of, and all stocks in so far as they
consist of articles of luxury, are not capital.
- -If Mill, by remitting the distinction to the mind of
the capitalist, avoids this difficulty (which does not
seem to me clear), it is by making the distinction so
vague that no power short of omniscience could tell in
any given country at any given time what was and
what was not capital.
But the great defect which these definitions have in
Chop* JtT^
TIIE MEANING OF THE TERMS
45
common is that they include what clearly cannot be
accounted capital, if any distinction is to be made be-
tween laborer and capitalist. For they bring into the
category of capital the food, clothing, etc., in the pos-
session of the day laborer, which he will consume
whether he works or not, as well as the stock in the
hands of the capitalist, with which he proposes to pay
the laborer for liis work.
Yet, manifestly, this is not the sense in , which the
term capital is used by these writers when they speak of
labor and capital as taking separate parts in the work
of production and separate shares in the distribution of
its proceeds; when they speak of wages as drawn from
capital, or as depending upon the ratio between labor
and capital, or in any of the ways in which the term
is generally used by them. In all these cases the term
capital is used in its commonly understood sense, as
that portion of wealth which its owners do not pro-
pose to use directly for their own gratification, but fos
the purpose of obtaining more wealth. In short, by
political economists, in everything except their defini-
tions and first principles, as well as by the world at
large, “that part of a man’s, stock,” to use the words of
Adam Smith, “which he expects to afford him revenue
is called his capital.” This is the only sense in which
the term capital expresses any fixed idea — ^the only
sense in which we can with any clearness separate it
. from wealth and -contrast it with labor. For, if we
• must consider as capital everything which supplies the
laborer with food, clothing, shelter, etc., then to find a
laborer who is not a capitalist we shall be forced to
hunt up an absolutely naked man, destitute even of a
sharpened stick, or of a burrow in the ground — a situa-
tion in which, save as the result of exceptional circum-
stances, human beings have never yet been found.
, It seems to me that the variance and inexactitude in
WAGES AKD CAPITAL
BookL
i6
these definitions arise from the fact that the idea of
what capital is has been deduced from a preconceived
idea of how capital assists production. Instead of de-
termining what capital is, and then observing what
capital does, the functions of capital have first been
assumed, and then a definition of capital made which in-
cludes ail things which do or may perform those func-
tions. Let us reverse this process, and, adopting the
natural order, ascertain what the thing is before settling
what it does. All we are trying to do, all that it is neces-
sary to do, is to fix, as it were, the metes and bounds of
a term that in the main is well apprehended — ^to make
definite, that is, sharp and clear on its verges, a com-
mon idea.
If the articles of actual w^ealth existing at a given
time in a given community were presented in situ to a
dozen intelligent men who had never read a line of
political econom}^, it is doubtful if they would differ in
respect to a single item, as to whether it should be ac-
coimted capital or not. Money which its owner holds
for use in his business or in speculation would be ac-
counted capital; money set aside for household or per-
sonal expenses would not. That part of a farmer's crop
held for sale or for seed, or to feed his help in part
payment of wages, would be accounted capital; that
held for the use of his own family would not be. The
horses and carriage of a hackman would be classed as
capital, but an equipage kept for the pleasure of its
owner would not. >So no one would think of counting
as capital the false hair on the head of a woman, the
cigar in the mouth of a smoker, or the toy with which
a child is playing; but the stock of a hair dealer, of a
tobacconist, or of the keeper of a toy store, would be
unhesitatingly, set down as capital. A coat which a
tailor had made for sale would be accounted capital,
but not the coat he had made for himself. Food in the
Chap. II. the MEANING OF THE TERMS 47
possession of a hotel-keeper or a restaurateur would be
accounted capital, but not the food in the pantry of a
housewife, or in the lunch basket of a workman. Pig
iron in the hands of the smelter, or founder, or dealer,
would be accounted capital, but not the pig iron used
as ballast in the hold of a yacht. The bellows of a
blacksmith, the looms of a factory, would be capital,
but not the sewing machine of a woman who does onlj,
her own work; a building let for hire, or used for busi-
ness' or productive purposes, but not a homestead. In
short, I think we should find that now, as when Dr.
Adam Smith wrote, "that part of a man’s stock which
he expects to yield him a revenue is called his capital.”
And, omitting his unfortunate slip as to personal quali-
ties, and qualifying somewhat his enumeration of
money, it is doubtful if we could better list the different
articles of capital than did Adam Smith in the passage
which in the previous part of this chapter I have con-
densed.
Now, if, after having thus separated the wealth that
is capital from the wealth that is not capital, we look
for the distinction between the two classes, we shall not
find it to be as to the character-, capabilities, or final
destination of the things themselves, as has been vainly
attempted to draw it; but it seems to rhe that we shall
find it to be as to whether they are or are not in the
possession of the consumer.* Such articles of wealth
as in themselves, in their uses, or in their products, are.
* Money may be said to be in the hands of the consumer when
devoted to the procurement of gratification, as, though not in
itself devoted to consumption, it represents wealth which is; and
thus what in the previous paragraph I have given as the common
classification would be covered by this distinction, and would bg
substantially correct. In speaking of money in this 'connection,
I am of course speaking of coin, for although paper money may
perform all' the functions of coin, it is not wealth, and cannot
therefore be capital.
48
■WAGES AND CAPITAL
Booh I.
yet to be exchanged are capital; such articles of ■wealth
as are in the hands of the consumer are not capital.
Hence, if "we define capital as vjealth in ccnirse of ex-
change, understanding exchange to include not merely
the passing from hand -to hand, but also such transmu-
tations as occur vfhen the reproductive or transforming
forces of nature are utilized for the increase of wealth,
we shall, I think, comprehend all the things that the
general idea of capital properly includes, and shut out
all it does not. Under this definition, it seems to me, for
instance, will fall all such tools as are really capital.
For it is as to whether its services or uses are to be
exchanged or not which makes a tool an article of capi-
tal or merely an article of wealth. Thus, the lathe of
a manufacturer used in making things which are to be
exchanged is capital, while the lathe kept by a gentle-
man for his o'wm amusement is not. Thus, wealth used
in the construction of a railroad, a public telegraph line,
a stage coach, a theater, a hotel, etc., may be said to
be placed in the course of exchange.. The exchange is
not effected all at once, but little by little, with an in-
definite number of people. Yet there is an exchange,
and the "consumers” of the railroad, the telegraph line,
the stage coach, theater or hotel, are not the owners, but
the persons who from time to time use them.
Nor is this definition inconsistent 'with the idea that
capital is that part of wealth devoted to production.
It is "too narrow an understanding of production, which
confines it merely to the making of things. Production
includes not merely the making of things, but the bring-
ing of them to the consumer. The merchant or
storekeeper is thus as truly a producer as is the manufac-
turer, or farmer, and his stock or capital is as much
devoted to production as is theirs. But it is, not worth
while now to dwell upon the functions of capital, -which
we shall be better able to determine hereafter. Nor is
Chav, n.’ THE MEAKING OF THE TERMS 49
the definition of capital I have suggested of any impor-
tance. I am not writing a text-book, but only attempt-
ing to discover the laws which control a great social
problem, and if the reader has been led to form a clear
idea of what things are meant when we speak of capital
my purpose is served.
But before closing this digression let me call attention
to what is often forgotten — ^namely, that the terms
‘■wealth,” “capital,” “wages,” and the like, as used in
political economj* are abstract terms, and that nothing
can be generally affirmed or denied of them that cannot
be affirmed or denied of the whole class of things they
represent. The failure to bear this in mind has led to
much confusion of thought, and permits fallacies, other'
wise transparent, to pass for obvious truths. Wealth
being an abstract term, the idea of wealth, it must be
remembered, involves the idea of exchangeability. The
possession of wealth to a certain amount is potentially
the possession of any or all species of wealth to that
equivalent in exchange.. And, consequently, so of
capital. '
f
CHAPTER III
WAGES NOT DEA^W FROM CAPITA!/, BUT PRODUCED BY THE
LABOR
The importance of this digi'ession will, I think, be-
come more and more apparent as we proceed in our
inquiry, but its pertinency to the branch we are now
engaged in may at once be seen.
It is at first glance evident that the economic mean-
ing of the term wages is lost sight of, and attention is
concentrated upon the common and narrow meaning
of the word, when it is affirmed that wages are drawn
from capital. For, in all those cases in which the
laborer is his own employer and takes directly the
produce of his labor as its reward, it is plain enough
that wages are not drawn from capital, but result
directly as the product of the labor. If, for instance, I
devote my labor to gathering birds^ eggs or picking
wild berries, the eggs or berries I thus get are my wages.
Surely no one will contend that in such a case wages are
drawn from capital. There is no capital in the case.
An absolutely naked man, thrown on an island where
no human being has before trod, may gather birds’ eggs
or pick berries.
Or if I take a piece of leather and work it up into a
pair of shoes, the shoes are my wages — ^the reward of
my exertion. Surely they are not drawn from capital —
either my capital or any one else’s capital — but are
brought into existence by the labor of which they be-
come the wages; and in obtaining this pair of shoes as
50
Chap. HI. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL 51
the wages of my labor, capital is not even momentarily
lessened one iota. For, if we call in the idea of capital,
my capital at the beginning consists of the piece of
lekher, the thread, etc. As my labor goes on, value is
steadily added, until, when my labor results in the
finished shoes, I have my capital plus the difference in
value between the material and the shoes. In obtain-
ing this additional value— my wages— how is capital at
any time drawn upon?
Adam Smith, who gave the direction to economic
thought that has resulted in the current elaborate the-
ories of the relation between wages and capital, recog-
nized the fact that in such simple cases as I have
instanced, wages are the produce of labor, and thus
begins his chapter upon the wages of labor (Chapter
VIII) :
“The produce of labor constitutes the natural recompense or
wages of labor. In that original state of things which precedes
both the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock,
the whole produce of labor belongs to the laborer. He has
neither landlord nor master to share with him.”
Had the great Scotchman taken this as the initial
point of his reasoning, and continued to regard the
produce of labor as the natural wages of labor, and the
landlord and master but as sharers, his conclusions
would have been very different, and political economy
to-day would not embrace such a mass of contradictions
and absurdities; but instead of following the truth obvi-
ous in -the simple modes of production as a clew through
the perplexities of the more complicated forms, he mo-
mentarily recognizes it, only immediately to abandon
it, and stating that “in every part of Europe twenty
workmen serve under a master for one that is inde-
pendent,” he recommences the inquiry from a point of
view in which the master is considered as providing
from his capital the wages of his workmen.
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Booh I,'
It is evident that in thus placing the* proportion of
self-employing workmen as but one in twenty, Adam
Smith had in mind but the mechanic arts, and that,
including aU laborers, the proportion who take their
earnings directly, vdthout the interveDtion of an em-
ployer, must, even in Europe a hundred years ago, have
been much greater than this. For, besides the indepen-
dent laborers who in every community exist in consider-
able numbers, the agriculture of large districts of
Europe has, since the time of the Roman Empire, been
carried on by the metayer system, under which the
capitalist receives his return from the laborer instead
of the laborer from the capitalist. At any rate, in the
United States, where any general law of wages must
apply as fully as in Europe, and where in spite of the
advance of manufactures a very large part of the people
are yet self-employing farmers, the proportion of la-
borers who get their wages through an employer must be
comparatively small.
But it is not necessary to discuss the 'ratio in which
self-employing laborers anyv/here stand to hired labor-
ers, nor is it necessaiy to multiply illustrations of the
truism that where the laborer takes directly his wages
they are the product of his labor, for as soon as -it is
realized that the term wages includes all the earnings
of labor, as well when taken directly by the laborer in
the results of his labor as when received from an em-
ployer, it is evident that the assumption that wages are
drawn from capital, on which as a universal truth such
a vast superstructure is in standard politico-economic
treatises so unhesitatingly built, is at least in large part
untrue, and the utmost that can with any plausibility
be affirmed is that some wages (f. e.^ wages received by
the laborer from an employer) are dravm from capital.
This restriction of the major premise at once invalidates
all the deductions that are made from it; but without
p. 111. VAGES NOT DRATSTST FROM CAPITAL iiS
ting here, let us see whether even in this restricted
ise it accords with the facts. Let us pick up the clew
ere Adam Smith dropped it, and advancing step by
p, see whether the relation of facts which is obvious
the simplest forms of production does not run through
! most complex.
S'cxt in simplicity to “that original state of things,”
which many examples may yet be found, where the
ole produce of labor belongs to the laborer, is the
angement in which the laborer, though working for
Dther person, or with the capital of another person,
eives his wages in kind— that is to say, in the' things
labor produces. In this case it is as clear as in the
'e of the self-employing laborer that the wages are
lly drawn from, the product. of the labor, and not
all from capital. If I hire a man to gather eggs to
k berries, or to make shoes, paying him from the eggs,
1 berries, or the shoes that his labor secures, there
1 be no question that the source of the wages is the
lor for which they are paid. Of this form of hiring
the saer-and-daer stock tenancy, treated of with such
■spicuity by Sir Henry Maine in his, “Early History
Institutions,” and which so clearly involved 'the rela-
n of employer and employed as to render the ac-
)tor of cattle the man or vassal of "the capitalist who
IS employed him. It was on such terms ' as these
Lt Jacob worked for Laban, and to this day, even in
ilized countries, it is not an infrequent mode of em-
ying labor. The farming of land on shares, which
ivails to a considerable extent in- the Southern States-
the Union and in. California, the metayer system' of
rope, as well as the many ca.ses in which .superinten-
Its, salesmen,, etc., are paid by a percentage of profits
at are they but the employment of labor for wages
ich consist of part of, its produce?
rhe next step in the advance from , simplicity to coni-
54
T^^AGES AND CAPITAL
Book I,
plexifcy is where the wages, though estimated in kind,
are paid in an equivalent of something else. For in-
stance, on American whaling ships the custom is not to
pay fixed wages, but a “lay,*' or proportion of the catch,
which varies from a sixteenth to a twelfth to the captain
down to a three-hundredth to the cabin-boy. Thus,
when a whaleship comes into New Bedford or San
Francisco after a successful cruise, she carries in her
hold the wages of her crew, as well as the profits of
her owners, and an equivalent which will reimburse
them for all the stores used up diming the voyage. Can
anything be clearer than that these wages — ^this oil and
bone which the crew of the whaler have taken — have
not been drawn from capital, but are really a part of
the produce of their labor? Nor is this fact changed or
obscured in the slightest degree where, as a matter of
convenience, instead of dividing up between the crew
their proportion of the oil and bone, the value of each
man's share is estimated at the market price, and he
is paid for it in money. The money is but the equiva-
lent of the real wages, the oil and bone. In no way
is there any advance of capital in this payment. The
obligation to nay wages does not accrue until the value
from which they are to be paid is brought into port.
At the moment when the owner. takes from his capital
money to pay the crew he adds to his capital oil and
bone.
So far there can be no dispute. Let us now take
another step, which will bring us to the usual method of
employing labor and paying wages.
The*^ Farallone Islands, off the Bay of San Francisco,
are a hatching ground of sea-fowl, and a company who
claim these islands employ men in the proper season to
collect the eggs. They might employ these men for a
proportion of the eggs they gather, as is done in the
whale fishery, and probably would do so if there were
Chap. in. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL 55
much uncertainty attending the business; but as the
fowl are plentiful and tame, and about so many eggs
can be gathered by so* much labor, they find it more
convenient to pay their men fixed wages. The men go
out and remain on the islands, gathering the eggs and
bringing them to a landing, whence, at intervals of a
few daj’s, they are taken in a small vessel to San
Francisco and sold. When the season is over the men
return and are paid their stipulated wages in coin. Does
not this transaction amount to the. same thing as if,
instead of being paid in coin, the stipulated wages were
paid in an equivalent of the eggs gathered? Does not
the coin represent the eggs, by the sale of which it was
obtained, and are not these wages as much the product
of the labor for which they are paid as the eggs would
be in the possession of a man who gathered them for
himself without the intervention of any employer?
To take another example, which shows by reversion
the identity of wages in money with wages in kind. In
San Buenaventura lives a man who makes an excellent
living by shooting for their oil and skins the common
hair seals which frequent the islands forming the Santa
Barbara Channel. When on these sealing expeditions
he takes two or three Chinamen along to. help him,
whom at first he paid wholly in coin. But it seems that
the Chinese highly value some of the organs of the seal,
which they dry and pulverize for medicine, as well as
the long hairs in the whiskers of the male seal, which,
when over a certain length, they greatly esteem for
some purpose that to outside -barbarians is not very
clear. And this man soon found that the Chinamen
were very willing to take instead of money these parts
of the seals killed, so that now, in large part, he thus
pays them their wages.
Now, is not' what may be seen in all these cases — the
identity of wages in money with wages in kind — true
WAGES A2sD CAPITAI. Bockl.
of all cases in which wages are paid for productive
labor? Is not the fund created by the labor really the
fund from which the wages are paid?
It may, perhaps, be said: “There is this difference—
where a man works for himself, or where, when w’orking
for an employer, he takes his wages in kind, his wages
depend upon the result of his labor. Should that, from
any misadventure, prove futile, he gets nothing. When
he works for an employer, however, he gets his wages,
anyhow — they depend upon the performance of the
labor, not upon the result of the labor,” But this is evi-
dently not a real distinction. Tor- on the average, the
labor that is rendered for fixed wages not only yields
the amount of the wages, but more; else employers could
make no profit. When wages are fixed, the employer
takes the whole risk and is compensated for this assur-
ance, for wages when fixed are always somewhat Jess
than wages contingent. But though when fixed wages
are stipulated the laborer who has performed his part
of the contract has usually a legal claim upon the em-
ployer, it is frequently, if not generally, the case that
the disaster which prevents the employer from reaping
benefit from the labor prevents him from paying the
wages. And in one important department of industry
the employer is legally exempt in case of disaster, al-
though the contract be for wages certain and not con-
tingent. For the maxim of admiralty law is, that
“freight is the mother of wages,” and though the sea-
man may have performed his part, the disaster which
prevents the ship from -earning freight deprives him of
claim for his wages.
In this legal maxim is- embodied the truth for which I
am contending. ■ Production is always the mother of
wages. Without production, wages would not and could
not be. It is from the produce of labor, not from the
advances of capital that wages come
Chap: III. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL ^ 5T-
.Wherever we analyze the facts this will be found to.
be true. For labor always precedes wages. This is as
universally true of wages received by. the, .laborer, from'-
an employer as it is of wages taken directly, by,' the'
laborer who is his own employer. , In the pne .class of
cases as in the other, reward is conditioned upon exer-
tion. Paid sometimes by the day, oftener by the week
or month, occasionally, by the year, and in many
branches of production by the piece, the payroent ' of
wages by an employer to 'an employee always implies,
the previous rendering of labor by the employee for th!e
benefit of the employer, for the few. cases in which ad-
vance payments are made , for personal services are evi-
dently referable either to charity or to guarantee and
purchase. The name ''retainer,” given to advance' pay-,
ments to lawyers, shows the true character of the trans-
action, as does the name "blood money”, given; in[
’longshore vernacular to a payment which is nommally
wages advanced to sailors, but ‘which in reality is pim-
chase money — both English and American law consider-
ing ar sailor as much a chattel as a pig.
•I dwell on this obvious fact that labor always pre-
cedes .wages, because it is all-important 'to an under-
standing of the more c6mplicate;d phenomena of wages,
that it should be kept in mind. And obvious as it is, as
I have put it, the plausibility of the proposition that
wages are drawn from capital — a proposition that is
made the basis for such important and far-reaching de-
ductions— comes in the first instance from a statement
that ignores and leads the attention away from this truth. -
That statement is, that labor cannot exert its produc-
tive power’ unless supplied by capital with mainte-'
nance.* The unwary reader at once recognizes the fact
.that the laborer must have food,- clothing, etc., in order
* Industry is limited by capital. . . . There can be no more
industry than is supplied with materials to work up and food, to
58
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Book 1.
to enable him to perform the work, and having been
told that the food, clothing, etc., used by productive
laborers are capital, he assents to the conclusion that
the consumption of capital is necessary to the applica-
tion of labor, and from this it is but an obvious de-
duction that industry is limited by capital — that the
demand for labor depends upon the supply of capital,
and hence that wages depend upon the ratio between
the number of laborers looking for employment and
the amount of capital devoted to hiring them.
But I think the discussion in the previous chapter
vdll enable any one to see wherein lies the fallacy of this
reasoning-^a fallacy which has entangled .some of the
most acute minds in a web of their own spinning. It is
in the use of the term capital in two senses. In the ■
primary proposition that capital is necessary to the
exertion of productive labor, the term "capitah^ is un-
derstood as including all food, clothing, shelter, etc.;
whereas, in the deductions finally drawn from it, the
term is used in its common and legitimate meaning of
wealth devoted, not to the immediate gratification of de-
sire, but to the procurement of more wealth — of wealth
in the hands of employers as distinguished from
laborers. The conclusion is no more valid than it would
be from the acceptance of the proposition that a laborer
cannot go to work without his breakfast and some
clothes, to infer that no more laborers can go to work
eat. Self-evident as the thing is, it is often forgotten that the
people of a country are maintained and have4heir wants sup-
plied not by the produce of present labor, but of past. They
consume what has been produced, not what is about to be pro-
duced-, Now, of what has been produced a part only is allotted
to the support of productive labor, and there will not and can-
not be more of that labor than the portion so allotted (which
is the capital of the country) , can feed and provide with the-
materials and instruments of production. — John Stuart Mill, Vrin'
ciples of Political Economy, Book I, Chap. V, Sec. I.
Cfiap. in. -WAGES NOT DRAWN EROM CAPITAL 59
than emplo3’-ers first furnish with breakfasts and clothes.
Now,, the fact is that laborers generally furnish their
own breakfasts and the clothes in which they go to
work; and the further fact is, that capital (in the sense
in which the word is used in distinction to labor) in
exceptional cases sometimes may, but is never com-
pelled to make advances to labor -before the work be-
gins. Of all the vast number of unemployed laborers
in the civilized world to-day, there is probably not a
single one willing to work who could not be employed
without any advance of wages. A gi-eat proportion
would doubtless gladly go to work on terms which did
not require the payment of wages before the end of a
month; it is doubtful if there are enough to be called a
class who would not go to work and wait for their
wages until the end of the week, as most laborers habit-
ually do; -v^diile there are certainly none who would nob
wait for their wages until the end of the day, or if you
please, until the next meal hour. The precise time of
the payment of wages is immaterial; the essential point
— ^the point I lay stress on — ^is that it is after the per-
formance of work.
The payment of wages, therefore, always implies the
previous rendering of labor. Now, what -does the ren-
dering of labor in production imply? Evidently the
production of wealth, which, if it is to be exchanged or
used -in production, is capital. Therefore, the payment
of capital in wages pre-supposes a production of capital
by the labpr for which the wages are paid. And as the
employer generally makes a profit, the payment of
wages is, so far as he is concerned, but the return to
the laborer of a portion of the capital he has received
from the labor. So far as the employee is concerned, it ■
is but the receipt of a portion of the capital his labor
has previously produced. As the value paid in the
wages is thus exchanged for a value brought into being
C2
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Book 7,
remarkable to see so many of those who, since Dr.
Adam Smith made tlie egg stand on its head, have
copiously demonstrated the fallacies of the mercantile
system, fall into delusions of the very same kind in
treating of the relations of capital and labor. Money
being the general medium of exchanges, the common
flux through which all transmutations of wealth from
one form to another take place, whatever difiiculties
may exist to an exchange will generally show themselves
on the side of reduction to money, and thus it is some-
times easier to exchange money for any other form of
wealth than it is to exchange wealth in a particular
form into money, for the reason that there are more
holders of wealth who desire to make some exchange
than there are who desire to make any particular ex-
change, And so a producing employer who has paid
out his money in wages may sometimes find it difficult
to turn quickly back into money the increased value
for which his money has really been exchanged, and is
spoken of as having exhausted or advanced his capital
in the payment of wages. Yet, unless the new value
created by the labor is less than the wages paid, which
can be only an exceptional case, the capital which he
had before in money he now has in goods — ^it has been
changed in form, but not lessened.
There is one branch of production in regard to whict
^he confusions of thought which arise from the habit
of estimating capital in money are least likely to occur,
inasmuch as its product is the general material and
standard of money. And it so happens that this busi-
ness furnishes us, almost side by side, with illustrations
of production passing from the simplest to most com-
plex forms.
In the early days of California, as afterward in
Australia, the placer miner, who found in river. bed or
surface deposit the glittering particles which the slow
chap. III. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL 63
processes of nature had for ages been accumulating,
picked up or washed out his “wages” (so, too, he called
them) in actual money, for coin being scarce, gold
dust passed as currency by weight, and at the end of
the day had his wages in money in a buckskin bag in
his pocket. There can be no dispute as to whether
these wages came from capital or not. They were mani-
festly the produce of his labor. Nor could there be any
dispute when the holder of a specially rich claim hired
men to work for him and paid them off in the identical
money which their labor had taken from gulch or bar.
As coin became more abundant, its greater convenience
in saving the trouble and loss of weighing assigned gold
dust to the place of a commodity, and with coin o-b-
tained by the sale of the dust their labor had procured,
the employing miner paid off his hands. Where he had
coin enough to do so, instead of selling his gold dust
at the nearest store and paying a dealer’s profit, he
retained it until he got enough to take a trip, or send
by express to San Francisco, where at the mint he could
have it turned into coin without charge. While thus
accumulating gold dust he was lessening his stock of
coin; just as the manufacturer, while accumulating a
stock of goods, lessens his stock of money. Yet no
one would be obtuse enough to imagine that in thus
taking in gold dust and paying out coin the miner was
lessening his capital.
But the deposits that could be worked without pre-
liminary labor were soon exhausted, and gold mining
rapidly took a more elaborate character. Before claims
could be opened so as to yield any return deep shafts
had to be sunk, great dams constructed, - long tunnels
cut through the hardest rock, water brought for miles
over mountain ridges and across deep valleys, and ex-
pensive machinery put up. These works could not be
constructed without capital. Sometimes their construe-
80
WAGES AITO CAPITAL
Booh I,
by the labor, how can it be said that wages are drawn
from capital or advanced by capital? As in the ex-
change of labor for wages the employer always gets
the capital created by the labor before he pays out capi-
tal in the wages, at what point is his capital lessened
even temporarily? *
Bring the question to the test of facts. Take, for in-
stance, an employing manufacturer who is engaged in
turning raw material into finished products — cotton
into cloth, iron into hardv/are, leather into boots, or so .
on, as maj' be, and who pays his hands, as is generally
the case, once a week. Make an exact inventory of his
capital on Monday morning before the beginning of
work, and it will consist of his buildings, machinery,
raw materials, monej’- on hand, and finished products in
stock. Suppose, for the sake of simplicity, that he
neither buys nor sells during the week, and after work
has stopped and he has paid his hands on Saturday
night, take a new inventory of his capital. The item of
money will be less, for it has been paid out in wages;
there will be less raw material, less coal, etc., and a
proper deduction must be made from the value of the
buildings and machinery for the week's wear and tear.
But if he is doing a remunerative business, whicn must
*I speak of labor producing capital for the sake of greater
clearness. What labor always procures is either wealth, which
may or may not be capital, or services, the cases in which noth-
ing is obtained being merely exceptional cases of misadventure.
Where the object of the labor is simply the gratification of the
employer, as where I hire a man to black my boots, I do not pay
the wages from capital, but from wealth which I have devoted,
hot to reproductive uses, but to consumption for my own satis-
faction. Even if wages thus paid be considered as drawn from
capital, then by that act they pass from the category of capital
to that of wealth, devoted to the gratification • of the possessor,
as when a cigar dealer takes a dozen cigars from the stock he has
for sale and puts them in his pocket for his own use.
Cftop. III. . WAGES NOT DRAWN PROM CAPITAL ^ 61
•on the avterage be the case, the item of finished products
will be so much greater as to compensate for all these
deficiencies and show in the summing up an increase of
capital. Manifestly, then, the value he paid his hands
in wages was not drawn from his capital, or from any
one else’s capital. It came, not from capital, but from
the value created by the labor itself. There was no
more advance of capital than if he had hired his hands
to dig clams, and -paid them with , a part of the clams
they. dug. Their wages were as truly the produce of
their labor as were the wages of the primitive man,
when, long '‘before the appropriation of land "and the
.accumulation of stock,” ,he obtained an oyster by knock-
ing it with a 'Stone from the rocks.
As the laborer who works for an employer does not
get his wages until he has performed the work, his case
is similar to that of the depositor in a bank who cannot
draw money out until he has put money in. And as by
• drawing out what he has previously put in, the bank de-
positor does not lessen the capital of the bank, neither
can laborers by receiving wages lessen even temporarily
either the capital of the employer or the aggregate capi-
tal of the community. Their wages no more come from
"sapital than the checks of deposit9rs are drawn against
bank capital. It is true that laborers in receiving wages
do not generally receive back wealth in the same form
in which they have rendered it, any more than bank de-
positors receive back the identical coins or bank notes
they have deposited, but they receive 'it in equivalent
form, and as we are justified in saying that the deposi-
tor receives from the bank the money he paid in, so are
we justified in saying' that the laborer receives in wages
the wealth he has rendered in labor.
That this universal truth is so often obscured, is
largely due to that fruitful source of economic obscuri-
ties, the confounding of wealth with money; and it is
C2
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Book
remarkable to see so many of those who, since Dr.
Adam Smith made the egg stand on its head, have
copiously demonstrated the fallacies of the mercantile
system, fall into delusions of the very same kind in
treating of the relations of capital and labor. Money
being the general medium of exchanges, the common
flux through which all transmutations of wealth from
one form to another take place, whatever difficulties
may exist to an exchange will generally show themselves
on the side of reduction to money, and thus it is some-
times easier to exchange money for any other form of
wealth than it is to exchange wealth in a particular
form into money, for the reason that there are more
holders of wealth who desire to make some exchange
than there are who desire to make any particular ex-
change. And so a producing employer who has paid
out his money in wages may sometimes find it difficult
to turn quicMy back into money the increased value
for which his money has really been exchanged, and is
spoken of as having exhausted or advanced his capital
in the payment of wages. Yet, unless the new value
created by the labor is less than the wages paid, which
can be only an exceptional case, the capital which he
had before in money he now has in goods — ^it has been,
changed in form, but not lessened.
There is one branch of production in regard to whict
the confusions of thought which arise from the habit
of estimating capital in money are least likely to occur,
inasmuch as its product is the general material and
standard of money. And it so happens that this busi-
ness furnishes us, almost side by side, with illustrations
of production passing from the simplest to most com-
plex forms.
In the early ,days of California, as afterward in
Australia, the placer miner, who found in river .bed or
surface deposit the glittering particles which the slow
t.hap. HI. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL 63
processes of nature had for ages been accumulating,
picked up or washed out his “wages” (so, too, he called
them) in actual money, for coin being scarce, gold
dust passed as currency by weight, and at the end of
the day had his wages in money in a buckskin bag in
his pocket. There can be no dispute as to whether
these wages came from capital or not. They were mani-
festly the produce of his labor. Nor could there be any
dispute when the holder of a specially rich claim hired
men to work for him and paid them off in the identical
money which their labor had taken from gulch or har.
As coin became more abundant, its greater convenience
in saving the trouble and loss of weighing assigned gold
dust to the place of a commodity, and with coin ob-
tained by the sale of the dust their labor had procured,
the employing miner paid off his hands. Where he had
coin enough to do so, instead of selling his gold dust
at' the nearest store and paying a dealer’s profit, he
retained it until he got enough to take a trip, or send
by express to San Francisco, where at the mint he could
have it turned into coin without charge. While thus
accumulating gold dust he was lessening his stock of
coin; just as the manufacturer, while accumulating a
stock of goods, lessens his stock of money. Yet no
one would be obtuse enough to imagine that in thus
taking in gold dust and paying out coin the miner was
lessening his capital.
But the dep6sits that could be worked without pre-
liminary' labor were soon exhausted, and gold mining
rapidly took a more elaborate character. Before claims
could be opened so as to yield any return deep shafts
had to be sunk,- great dams constructed, - long tunnels
cut through the hardest rock, water brought for miles
over mountain ridges and across' deep valleys, and ex-
pensive machinery put up. These works could not be
constructed without capital. Sometimes their construe-
o6
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Boohl,
the habit of estimating the amount of value which the
labor expended in any preparatory stage of production
has created. And a moment’s reflection will show that
this is the case as to the vast majority of products.
Take a ship, a building, a jack-knife, a book, a lady’s
thimble or a loaf of bread. They are finished prod-
ucts. But thej’’ were not produced at one operation or
by one set of producers. And this being the case,. we
readily distinguish different points, or stages in the' crea-
tion of the value which as completed articles they repre-
sent. When we do not distinguish different parts in
the final process of production we do distinguish the
value of the materials. The value of these materials
may often be again decomposed many times, exhibiting
as many clearly defined steps in the creation of the
final value. At each of these steps we habitually esti-
mate a creation of value, an addition to capital. The
batch of bread which the baker is taking from the -oven
has a certain value. But this is composed in part of
the value of the flour from which the dough was made.
And this again is composed of the value of the wheat, the
value given by milling, etc. Iron in the form of pigs
is very far from being a completed product. It must
yet pass through several, or, perhaps, through many,
stages of production before it results in the finished
articles that were the ultimate objects for which the
iron ore was extracted from the mine. Yet, is not pig
iron capital? And so the process of production is not
really completed when a crop of cotton is gathered, nor
yet when it is ginned and pressed; nor yet when it ar-
rives at Lowell or Manchester; nor yet when it is con-
verted into yarn; nor yet when it becomes cloth; but
only when it is finally placed in the hands of the con-
sumer. Yet at each step in this progress there is clearly
enough a creation of value — an addition to capital.
Why, therefore, although we do not so habitually dis-
Chap. HI.
WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL
67
tinguisli and estimate it, is there not a creation of
value — an addition to capital — when the gi’ound is
plowed for the crop? Is it because it may possibly be
a bad season and the crop may fail? Evidently not;
for a like possibility of misadventure attends every one
of the many steps . in the production of the finished
article. On the average a crop is sure to come up, and
so much plowing and sowing will on the average result
in so much cotton in the boll, as surely as so much spin-
ning of cotton yarn will result in so much cloth.
In short, as the payment of wages is always condi-
tioned upon the rendering of labor, the payment of
wages in production, no matter how long the process,
never involves any advance of capital, or even tempo-
rarily lessens capital. It may take a year, or even
years, to build a ship, but the creation of value of which
the finished ship will be the sum goes on day by day,
and hour by hour, from the time the keel is laid or
•even the ground is cleared. Nor by the payment of
Wages before the ship is completed, does the master
builder lessen either his capital or the capital of the
eommunity, for the value of the partially completed
ship stands in place of the value paid out in 'wages.
There is no advance of capital in this payment of
wages, for the labor of the workmen during the week
nr month creates and renders to the builder more
■ capital than is paid back to them at the end of the
week or month, as is shown by the fact that if the
builder were at any stage of the construction asked to
sell a partially completed ship he would expect a profit.
And so, when a Sutro or St. Gothard tunnel or a
Suez canal is cut, there is no advance of capital. The
tunnel or canal, as it is cut, becomes capital as much as -
the money spent in cutting it — or, if you please, the
powder,, drills, etc., used in the work, and the food,
■clothes, etc., used by the workmen — as is shown by the
64 WAGES A2sT)' CAPITAL Booir
tion required years, during which no return coidd ba
hoped for, while the men employed had to be paid their
wages every week, or every month. Surely, it will be
said, in such cases, even if in no others, that wages do
actually come from capital; are actually advanced by
capital ; and must necessarily lessen capital in their pay-
ment! Surely here, at least, industry is limited by capi-
tal, for without capital such works could not be carried
on! Let us see:
V
It is cases of this class that are always instanced as
showing that wages are advanced from capital. For
where wages are paid before the object of the labor is
obtained, or is finished — as' in agriculture, where plow-
ing and sowing must precede by several months tht
harvesting of the crop; as in the erection of buildings,
the construction of ships, railroads, canals, etc. — ^it is
clear that the owners of the capital paid in wages can-
not expect an immediate return, but, as the phrase is,
must “outlay it,” or “lie out of it” for a time, which
sometimes amounts to many years. And hence, if first
principles are not kept in mind, it is easy to jump to
the conclusion that wages are advanced by capital.
But such cases will not embarrass the reader to whom
in what has preceded I have made myself clearly under-
stood. An easy analysis will show that these instances
where wages are paid before the product is finished, or
even produced, do not afford any exception to the. rule
apparent where the product is finished before wages are
paid.
If I go to a broker to exchange silver for gold, I lay
down my silver, which he counts and puts away, and
then hands me the equivalent in gold," minus his com-
mission. Does the broker advance me any capital?
Manifestly not. I^Tiat he had before in gold he now has
in silver, plus his profit. And as he got the silver before
Chav. lit. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL 65
lie paid out the gold, there is on his part not even mo-
mentarily an advance of capital.
Now, this operation of the broker is precisely analo-'
gous to what the capitalist does, when, in such cases as
we are now considering, he pays out capital in wages. As
the rendering of labor precedes the payment of wages,
and as the rendering of labor in production implies the
creation of value, the emploj'^er receives value before he
pays out value — ^lie but exchanges capital of one form
for capital of another form. For the creation of value
does not depend upon the finishing of the product; it
takes place at every stage of the process of production,
as the immediate result of the application of labor, and
hence, no matter how long the process in which it is en-
gaged, labor always adds to capital by its exertion
before it takes from capital in its wages.
Here is a blacksmith at his forge making picks.
Clearly he is making capital — adding picks to his em-
ployer’s capital before he draws money from it in
wages. Here is a machinist or boilermaker working on
the keel-plates of a Great Eastern. Is not he also just
as clearly creating value — ^making capital? The giant
steamship, as the pick, is an article of wealth, an instru-
ment of production, and though the one may not be
, completed for years, w^hile the other is completed in a
few minutes, each day’s work, in the one case as in the
“^ther, is as clearly a production of wealth — an addition
to capital. In the case of the steamship, as in the case,
of the pick, it is not the last blow, any more than the
first blow, that creates the value of the finished product
— ^the creation of value is continuous, it immediately
results from the exertion of labor.
We see this very clearly wherever the division of
labor has made it customary for different parts of the
full process of production to be carried on by diffei’ent
sets of producers — ^that is to say, wherever we are in.
o6
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Boohh
the habit of estimating the amount of value which the
labor expended in any preparatory stage of production
has created. And a moment’s reflection will show that
this is the case as to the vast majority of products.
Take a ship, a building, a jack-knife, a book, a lady’s
thimble or a loaf of bread. They are finished prod-
ucts, But they were not produced at one operation or
by one set of producers. And this being the case,. we
readily distinguish different points, or stages in the' crea-
tion of the value which as completed articles they repre-
sent. When we do not distinguish different parts in
the final process of production we do distinguish the
value of the materials. The value of these materials
may often be again decomposed many times, exhibiting
as many clearly defined steps in the creation of the
final value. At each of these steps we habitually esti-
mate a creation of value, an addition to capital. The
batch of bread which the baker is taking from the oven
has a certain value. But this is composed in part of
the value of the flour from which the dough was made.
And this again is composed of the value of the wheat, the
value given by milling, etc. Iron in the form of pigs
is very far from being a completed product. It must
yet pass through several, or, perhaps, through many,
stages of production before it results in the finished
articles that were the ultimate objects for which the
iron ore was extracted from the mine. Yet, is not pig
iron capital? And so the process of production is not
really completed when a crop of cotton is gathered, nor
yet when it is ginned and pressed; nor yet when it ar-
rives at Lowell or Manchester; nor yet when it is con-
verted into yarn; nor yet when it becomes cloth; but
only when it is finally placed in the hands of the con-
sumer. Yet at each step in this progress there is clearly
enough a creation of value — an addition to capital.
Why, therefore, although we do not so habitually dis-
Chap. III. WAGES NOT DEAWN PROM CAPITAL
67
tinguisli and estimate it, is there not a creation of
value— an addition to capital— when the ground is
plowed for the crop? Is it because it may possibly be
a bad season and the crop may fail? Evidently nof
for a like possibility of misadventure attends every one
of the many steps, in the production of the finished
article. On the average a crop is sure to come up and
so much plowing and sovdng will on the average result
in so much cotton in the boll, as surely as so much spin-
ning of cotton yarn will result in so much cloth.
^ In short, as the payment of wages is always condi-
tioned upon the rendering of labor, the payment of
wages in production, no matter how long the process
never involves any advance of capital, or even tempo-
rarily lessens capital. It may take a year, or even
years, to build a ship, but the creation of value of which
■the finished ship will be the sum goes on day by day
•and hour by hour, from the time the keel is laid or
•even the ground is cleared. Nor by the payment of
wages before the ship is completed, does the master
builder lessen either his capital or the capital of the
eommunity, for the value of the partially completed
^np stands in place of the value paid out in 'wages
There is no advance of capital in this payment of
wages, for the labor of the workmen during the week
■or month creates and renders to the builder more
capital than is paid back to them at the end of the
week or month, as is shown by the fact that if the
builder were at any stage of the construction asked to
sell a partially completed ship he would expect a profit
And so, when a Sutro or St. Gothard tunnel or a
•buez canal is cut, there is no advance of capital The
tunnel or canal, as it is cut, becomes capital as much as -
.the money spent in cutting it— or, if you please the
powder,- drills, etc., used in the work, and^the food
clothes, etc., used by the workmen— as is shown by the
70
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Boole L
And so we shall find it in every branch of production.
Capital has never to be set aside for the payment of
wages when the produce of the labor for which the wages
are paid is exchanged as soon as produced; it is only
required when this produce is stored up, or what is to
the individual the same thing, placed in the general cur-
rent of exchanges without being at once drawn against
— that is, sold on credit. But the capital thus required
is not required for the payment of wages, nor for ad-
vances to labor, as it is always represented in the prod-
uce of the labor. It is never as an employer of labor
that any producer needs capital; when he does need
capital, it is because he is not only an employer of
labor, but a merchant or speculator in, or an accumula-
tor of, the products of labor. This is generally the case
with employers.
To recapitulate: The man who works for himself gets
his wages in the things he produces, as he produces them,
and exchanges this value into another form whenever
he sells the produce. The man who works for another
for stipulated wages in money works under a contract
of exchange. He also creates his wages as he renders
his labor, but he does not get them except, at stated
times, in stated amounts, and in a different form. In
performing the labor he is advancing in exchange;. when
he gets his wages the exchange is completed. During
the time he is earning the wages he is advancing capital
to his employer, but at no time, unless wages are paid
before work is done, is the employer advancing capital
to him. Whether the employer who receives this prod-
uce in exchange for the wages immediately re-exchanges
it, or keeps it for awhile, no more alters the charactei
of the transaction than does the' final disposition of the
product made by the ultimate receiver, who may, per-
haps, be in another quarter of the globe and at the end
nf a series of exchanges numbering hundreds.
CHAPTER IV
THE MAINTENANCE OP LABORERS NOT DRAWN FROM
CAPITAL
But a stumbling block may yet remain, or may recur,'
in the mind of the reader.
As the plowman cannot eat the furrow, nor a partially
completed steam engine aid in any way in producing the
clothes the machinist wears, have I not, in the words of
John Stuart Mill, “forgotten that the people of a coun-
try are maintained and have their wants supplied, not
by the produce of present labor, but of past?" Or, to
use the language of a popular elementary work — that
of Mrs, Fawcett — have I not “forgotten that many
months must elapse between the sowing of the seed and
the time when the produce of that seed is converted into
a loaf of bread," and that “it is, therefore, evident that
laborers , cannot live upon that which their labor is assist-
ing to produce, but are maintained by that wealth which
their labor, or the labor of others, has previously pro-
duced, which wealth is capital?" *
The assumption made in these passages — ^the assump-
tion that it is so self-evident that labor must be subsisted
from capital that the proposition has but to be stated
to compel recognition — runs through the whole fabric
of current political economy. And so confidently is it
held that the maintenance of labor is drawn from capi-
* Political Economj’- for Beginners, by Millicent Garrett Faw-
cett, Chap. Ill, p. 25.
71
68 WAGES AND CAPITAL Book I.
fact that the value of the capital stock of the company
is not lessened as capital in these forms is gradually
changed into capital in the form of tunnel or canal. On
the contrary, it probably, and on the average, increases
as the work progresses, just as the capital invested in a
speedier mode of production would on the average
increase.
And this is obvious in agriculture also. That the
creation of value does not take place all at once when
the crop is gathered, but step by step during the whole
process which the gathering of the crop concludes, and
that no payment of wages in the interim lessens the
farmer’s capital, is tangible enough when land is sold or
rented during the process of production, as a plowed field
will bring more than an unplowed field, or a field that
has been sown more than one merely plowed. It is
tangible enough when growing crops are sold, as is some-
times done, or where the farmer does not harvest him-
self, but lets a contract to the owner of harvesting
machinery. It is tangible in the case of orchards and
vineyards which, though not yet in bearing, bring prices ■
proportionate 'to their age. It is tangible in the case of
horses, cattle and sheep, which increase in value as thej^ ,,
grow toward maturity. And if not always tangible be-
tween what may be called the usual exchange points in
production, this increase of value as surely takes place
with every exertion of labor. Hence, where labor is
rendered before wages are paid, the advance of capital is
really made by labor, and is from the employed to the
employer, not from the employer to the employed.
“Yet,” it may be said, “in such cases as we have been
considering capital is required!” Certainly; I do not
dispute that. But it is not required in order to make
advances to labor. It is required for quite another pur-
pose. YTat that purpose is we may readily see.
When wages are paid in kind — ^that is to say, in wealth
Chap. III. WAGES NOT DKAWN FROM CAPITAL 69
of the same species as the labor produces; as, for in-
stance, if I hire men to cut wood, agreeing to give them
as wages a portion of the wood they cut, a method some-
times adopted by the owners or lessees of woodland, it
is evident that no capital is required for the payment of\
.wages. Nor yet when, for the sake of mutual conven-
ience, arising from the fact that a large quantity of wood
can be more readily and more advantageously exchanged
than a number of small quantities, I agree to pay wages
in money, instead of wood, shall I need any capital,
provided I can make the exchange of the wood for money
before the wages are due; It is only when I cannot
make such an exchange, or such an advantageous ex-
change as I desire, until I accumulate a large quantity
of wood that I shall need capital. Nor even then shall
I need capital if I can make a partial or tentative ex-
change by borrowing on my wood. If I cannot, or do
not choose, either to sell the wood or to borrow upon it,
and yet wish to go ahead accumulating a large stock of
wood, I shall need capital. But manifestly, I need this
capital, not for the payment of wages, but for the accu-
mulation of a stock of wood. Likewise in cutting’ a
tunnel. If the workmen were paid in tunnel (which, if
convenient, might easily be done by paying, them in
stock of the company) , no capital for .the payment of
wages would be required. It is only when the under-
takers wish to accumulate capital in the shape of a tun-
nel that they will need capital. To recur to our first
illustration; The broker to whom I sell my silver cannot,
carry on his business without capital. • But he does not
need this capital because he makes any advance of ~
f.apital to me when he receives my silver and hands me ■
gold. He needs it because the nature of the business
requires the keeping of a certain amount of capital on'
hand, in order that when a customer comes lie may be
Prepared to make the exchange tliR customer desires.
70
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Book L
And so we shall find it in every branch of production.
Capital has never to be set aside for the payment of
wages when the produce of the labor for which the wages
are paid is exchanged as soon as produced; it is only
required when this produce is stored up, or what is to
the individual the same thing, placed in the general cur-
rent of exchanges without being at once drawn against
— ^that is, sold on credit. But the capital thus required
is not required for the paj’-ment of wages, nor for ad-
vances to labor, as it is always represented in the prod-
uce of the labor. It is never as an employer of labor
that any producer needs capital; when he does need
capital, it is because he is not only an employer of
labor, but a merchant or speculator in, or an accumula-
tor of, the products of labor. This is generally the case
with employers.
To recapitulate: The man who works for himself gets
his wages in the things he produces, as he produces them,
and exchanges this value into another form whenever
he sells the produce. The man who works for another
for stipulated wages in money works under a contract
of exchange. He also creates his wages as he renders,
his labor, but he does not get them except at stated
times, in stated amounts, and in a different form. In
performing the labor he is advancing in exchange; when
he gets his wages the exchange is completed. During ,
the time he is earning the wages he is advancing capital
to his employer, but at no time, unless wages are paM
before work is done, is the employer advancing capital
to him. Whether the employer who receives this prod-
uce in exchange for the wages immediately re-exchanges
it, or keeps it for awhile, no more alters the characte/
of the transaction than does the' final disposition of the
product made by the ultimate receiver, who may, per-
haps, be in another quarter of the globe and at the end
of a series of exchanges numbering hundreds.
CHAPTER IV
THE MAINTENANCE OP LABORERS NOT DRAWN FROM
CAPITAL
But a stumbling block may yet remain, or may recur
in the mind of the reader, ' ’
As the plowman cannot eat the furrow, nor a partially
completed steam engine aid in any way in producing the
clothes the machinist wears, have I not, in the words of
John Stuart Mill, ‘'forgotten that the people of a coun-
try are maintained and have their wants supplied not
by the produce of present labor, but of past?’' Or, to
use the language of a popular elementary work— that
of Mrs. Fawcett— have I not “forgotten that many
months must elapse between the sowing of the seed and
the time when the produce of that seed is conv^erted into
a loaf of bread,” and that “it is, therefore, evident that
laborers cannot live upon that which their labor is assist-
ing to produce, but are maintained by that wealth which
their labor, or the labor of others, has previously pro-
duced, .which wealth is capital?” *
The assumption made in these passages— the assump-
tion that it is so self-evident that labor must be subsisted
irom capital that the proposition has but to be stated
to compel recognition— runs through the whole fabric
01 current political economy. And so confidently is it
held that the maintenance of labor is drawn from capi-
^ttfcba^nr^ns^ BceinncB, by Millicnt Gntrett FaF-
71
72
WAGES AJSTD CAPITAL
Booh I,
tal that the proposition that ‘'population regulates itself
by the funds which are to employ it, and, therefore, al-
■ ways increases or diminishes with the increase or diminu-
tion of capital,” is regarded as equally axiomatic, and
in its turn made the basis of important reasoning.
Yet being resolved, 'these propositions are seen to be,
not self-evident, but absurd; for they involve the idea
that labor cannot be exerted until the products of labor
are saved — thus putting the product before the producer.
And being examined, they will be seen to derive their .
apparent plausibility from a confusion of thought.
I have already pointed out the fallacj’-, concealed by
an erroneous definition, which underlies the proposition
that because food, raiment and shelter are necessary to
productive labor, therefore industry is limited by capi-
tal. To say that a man must have his breakfast before
going to work is not to say that he cannot go to work
unless a capitalist furnishes him with a breakfast, for
his breakfast may, and in point of fact in any country
where there is not actual famine will, come not from
wealth set apart for' the assistance of production, but
from wealth set apart for subsistence. And, as has been
previously shown, food, clothing, etc. — in short, all ar-
ticles of wealth— are only capital so long as they remain
in the possession of those who propose, not to consume,
but to exchange them for other commodities or for pro-
ductive services, and cease to be capital when they pass
into the possession of those who will consume them; for
in that transaction they pass from .the stock of wealth
held for the purpose of procuring other wealth, and pass .
into the stock of wealth held for purposes of gratifica-
tion, irrespective of whether their consumption will aid
in the production of wealth or not. Unless this distinc-
’* The words quoted are Ricardo’s (Chap. H) ; but the idea is
common in standard works.
Vhap. IV. LABORERS NOT MAINTAINED BY CAPITAL . 73
tion is preserved it is impossible to draw the line be-
tween the wealth that is capital and the' wealth that- is
not capital, even by^ remitting the distinction to the
‘‘mind of the possessor/’ as does John Stuart Mill. For
men do not eat or abstain, v/ear clothes or go naked, as
they propose to engage in productive labor or not. They
eat because they are hungry, and wear clothes because
they would be uncomfortable without them. Take the
food on the breakfast table of a laborer who will work
or not that day as he gets the opportunity. If the dis-
, tinction between capital and non-capital be the support
of productive labor, is this food capital or not? It is
as impossible for the laborer himself as fftjt^iny philoso-
pher. of the Ricardo-Mill school to tell. "^lor yet car
it be told when it gets into his stomach; nor, supposing
that he does not get work at first, but continues the
search, can it be told until it has passed into the blood
and' tissues. Yet the man will eat his breakfast all the
same. ^ .
But, though it would be logically sufficient, it is hardly
safe to rest here and leave the argument to turn on the
distinction between wealth and capital. Nor is it neces-
sary. It seems to me that the proposition that present
labor must be maintained by the produce of past labor
will upon analysis prove to be true only in the sense
that the afternoon’s labor must be performed by the
aid of the noonday meal, or that before you eat the
hare he must be caught and cooked. And this, mani-
festly, is not the sense in which the, proposition is used'
to support the important reasoning that is made to
hinge upon it. That sense is, that before a work which
will not immediately result in wealth available for sub-
sistence can be carried on, there must ealst such a stock
of subsistence as will support the laborers during the
process. Let us see if this be true:
The canoe which Robinson Crusoe made with such
74
WAGES A^*D CAPITAL
Book 1,
infinite toil and pains was a production in which his
labor could not yield an immediate return. But was it
necessary’' that, before he commenced^ he should accumu-
late a stock of food sufficient to maintain him while he
felled the tree, hewed out the canoe, and finally launched
her into the sea? Not at all. It was necessary only
that he should devote part of his time to the procure-
ment of food while he was devoting part of his time to
the building and launching of the canoe. Or supposing
a hundred men to be landed, without any stock of pro-
visions, in a new country. Will it be necessary for them
to accumulate a season's stock of provisions before they
can begin to cultivate the soil? Not at all. It will be
necessary only that fish, game, berries, etc., shall be so
abundant that the labor of a part of the hundred may
suffice to furnish daily enough of these for the mainte-
nance of all, and that there shall be such a sense of
mutual interest, or such a correlation of desires, as shall
lead those who in the present get the food to divide (ex-
change) with those whose efforts are directed to future
recompense.
What is true in these cases is true in all cases. It is
not necessary to the production of things that cannot be
used as subsistence, or cannot be immediately utilized,
that there should have been a previous production of
the wealth required for the maintenance of the laborers
while the production is going on. It i§ only necessary
that there should be, somewhere within the circle of ex-
change, a contemporaneous production of sufficient sub-
sistence for the laborers, and a willingness to exchange
this subsistence for the thing on. which the labor is being
bestowed.
And as a matter of fact^ is .it not true, in any normal
condition of things, that consumption is supported by
contemporaneous production?
Here is a luxurious idler, who does no productive work
Chap. IV. LABORERS NOT I^LUNTAESTED BY CAPITAL ' 75
either with head or hand, but lives, we say, upon wealth
winch his father left him securely invested in govern-
ment bonds. Does his subsistence, as a matter of fact
come from w^ealth accumulated in the past or from the
productive labor that is going on around him? On his
table are new^-laid eggs, butter churned but a few days
before, milk which the cow' gave this morning, fish which
tw^enty-four hours ago w'ere swimming in the sea, meat
w^hich the* butcher boy has just brought in time to be
cooked, vegetables fresh from the garden, and fruit from
the orchard — in short, hardly anything that has not re-
cently left the hand of the productive laborer (for in
this category must be included transporters and distribu-
tors as well as those wiio are engaged in the first stages
of production) , and nothing that has been produced for
any considerable length of time, unless it may be some
bottles of old wine, mat this man inherited from his
father, and on which we say he lives, is not actually
wealth at all, but only the power of commanding wealth
as others produce it. And it is from this contemporane-
ous production that his subsistence is drawn.
The fifty square miles of London undoubtedly contain
more wealth than within the same space anywhere else
exists. Yet w^ere productive labor in London absolutely
to cease, within a few hours people would begin to die
like rotten sheep, and within a few^ weeks, or at most
a few months, hardly one wmuld be left alive. For an
entire suspension of productive labor would be a disaster
more- dreadful than ever yet befell a beleaguered city
it would not be a mere external wall of circumvallation*
such as Titus drew around Jerusalem, which would pre-
vent the constant incoming of the supplies on which a
great city lives, but it would be the drawing of a similar
wa l around each household. Imagine such a suspension
01 labor m any community, and you will see how true it
IS that mankind really live from hand to mouth- 'that
76
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Boohl.
it is the daily labor of the community that supplies the
community with its daily bread.
Just as the subsistence of the laborers who built the
Pyramids was dra'wn not from a prewously hoarded
stock, but from the constantly recurring crops of the
Nile Vallej’ ; just as a modern government when it un-
dertakes a great work of years does not appropriate to
it wealth already produced, but wealth yet to be pro-
duced, which is taken from producers in taxes as the
work progresses; so it is that the subsistence of the
laborers engaged in production which does not directly
yield subsistence comes from the production of sub-
sistence in which others are simultaneously engaged.
If we trace the circle of exchange by which work done
in the production of a great steam engine secures to the
worker bread, meat, clothes and shelter, we shall find
that though between the laborer on the engine and the
producers of the bread, meat, etc., there may be a thou-
sand intermediate exchanges, the transaction, when re-
duced to its lowest terms, really amounts to an exchange
of labor between him and them. Now the cause which
induces the expenditure of the labor on the engine is
evidently that some one who has power to give what is
desired by the laborer on the engine wants in exchange
an engine — ^that is to say, there exists a demand for an
engine on the part of those producing bread, meat, etc.,
or on the part of those who are producing what the pro-
ducers of the bread, meat, etc., desire. It is this demand
which directs the labor of the machinist to the produc-
tion of the engine, and hence, reversely, the demand of
the machinist for bread, meat, etc., really directs an
equivalent amount of- labor to the production of these
things, and thus his labor, actually exerted in the pro-,
duction of the engine, virtually produces the things in
which he expends his wages.
Or, to formularize this principle:
CTtap. IV. LABOEERS NOT MAINTAINED BY CAPITAL , 77
The demand jor consumption determines the direction
in which labor will be expended in production.
This principle is so simple and obvious that it needs
no further illustration, yet in its light all the complexi-
ties of our subject disappear, and we thus reach the
same view of the real objects and rewards of labor in
the’ intricacies of modern production that we gained by
observing in the first beginnings of society the simpler
forms of production and exchange. We see that now,
as then, each laborer is endeavoring to obtain by his ex-
ertions the satisfaction of his own desires; we see that
although the minute division of labor assigns to each
producer the production of but a small part, or perhaps
nothing at all, of the particular things he labors to get,
yet, in. aiding in the production of what other producers
Want, he is directing other labor to the production of
the things he wants — ^in effect, producing them himself.
And thus, if he- make jack-knives and eat wheat,' the
wheat is really as much the produce of his labor as if
he had grown it for himself and left wheat-growers to
make their own jack-knives.
We thus see how thoroughly and completely true it
is, that in whatever is taken or consum^ by laborers
in return for labor rendered, there is no a,dvance of
capital to the laborers. If I have made jack-knives,
and with the wages received have bought wheat, I have
simply exchanged jack-knives for wheat-padded jack-
knives to the existing stock of wealth and taken wheat
from it. And as the demand for consumption determines
the' direction in which labor will be expended in produc-
tion, it cannot even be said, so long as the limit of wheat
production has not , been reached, that I have lessened
the stock of wheat, for, by placing jack-knives in the
exchangeable stock of wealth and taking wheat out, I
have determined labor at the other end of a series of
78
WAGES AND CAPITAL
hooTi J.
exchanges to the production of wheat' just as the wheat
grower, by putting in wheat and demanding jack-knives,
determined labor to the production of jack-knives, as
the easiest way by which wheat could be obtained.
And so the man who is following the plow — ^though
the crop for which he is opening the ground is not yet
sown, and after being sown will take months to arrive at
maturity — ^he is yet, by the exertion of his labor in plow-
ing, virtually producing the food he eats and the wages
he receives. For, though plowing is but a part of the
operation of producing a crop, it ts a part, and as neces-
sary a part as harvesting. The doing of it is a step to-
ward procuring a crop, which, by the assurance which it
gives of the future crop, sets free from the stock con-
stantly held the subsistence and wages of the plowman.
This is not merely theoretically true, it is practically and
literally true. At the proper time for plowing, let plow-
ing cease. Would not the sj’’mptoms of scarcity at once
manifest themselves without waiting for ’the time of the
han^’est? Let plowing cease, and would not the effect at
once be felt in counting-room, and machine shop, and
factory? Would not loom and spindle soon stand as idle
as the plow? That this would be so, we see in the effect
which immediately follows a bad season. And if this
would be so, is not the man who plows really producing
his subsistence and wages as much as though during the
day or week his labor actually resulted in the things for
which his labor is exchanged?
As a matter of fact, where there is labor looking for
employment, the want of capital does not prevent the
owner of land which promises a crop for which there is
a demand from hiring it. Either he makes- an agree-
ment to cultivate on shares, a common method in
some parts of the United States, in which case the labor-
ers, if they are without means of subsistence, will, on the
strengrth of the work they are doing, obtain credit at the
Chav. IV. LABOKERS NOT MAINTAINED BY CAPITAL 7&
nearest store; or, if he prefers to pay wages, the farmer
will himself obtain credit, and thps the work done in
cultivation is immediately utilized or exchanged as it
is done. If anything more will be used up than would
be used up if the laborers were forced to beg instead of
to work (for in any civilized country during a normal
condition of things the laborers must be supported any-
how), it will be the reserve capital drawn out by the
prospect of replacement, and which is in fact replaced
by the work as it is done. For instance, in the purely
agricultural districts of Southern California there was
in 1877 a total failure of the crop, and of millions of
sheep nothing remained but their bones. In the great
San Joaquin Valley were many farmers without food
enough to support their families until the next harvest
time, let alone to support any laborers. But the rains
came again in proper season, and these very farmers
proceeded to hire hands to plow and to sow. For every
here and there was a farmer who had been holding back
part of his crop. As soon as the rains came he was
anxious to sell before the next harvest brought lower
prices, and the grain thus held in reserve, through the
machinery of exchanges and advances, passed to the
use of the cultivators — set free, in effect produced, by
the work done for the next crop.
The series of exchanges which unite production and
consumption may be likened to a curved pipe filled with
water. If a quantity of water is poured in at one end,
a like quantity is released at the other. It is not identi-
cally the same water, but is its equivalent. And sO'
they who do the work of production put in as they take
out— they receive in subsistence and wages but the
produce of their labor.
CHAPTER V
THE BEAL FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL
It may no'w be asked, If capital is not required for
the payment of wages or the support of labor during
production, what, then, are its functions?
The previous examination has made the answer clear.
Capital, as we have seen, consists of wealth used for the
procurement of more wealth, as distinguished from
wealth used for the direct satisfaction of desire; or, as
I think it may be defined, of wealth in the course of
exchange.
Capital, therefore, increases the power of labor to pro-
duce wealth: (1) By enabling labor to apply itself in
more effective ways, as by digging up clams with a
spade instead of the hand, or moving a vessel by shovel-
ing coal into a furnace, instead of tugging at an oar.
(2) By enabling labor to avail itself of the reproductive
forces of nature, as to obtain com by sowing it, or ani-
mals by breeding them. (3) By peimitting the division
of labor, and thus, on the one hand, increasing the
eflaciency of the human factor of wealth, by the utiliza-
tion of special capabilities, the acquisition of skill, and
the reduction of waste; and, on the other, calling in the
powers of the natural factor at their highest, by taking
advantage of the diversities of soil, climate and situa-
tion, so as to obtain each particular species of wealth
where nature is most favorable to its production.
Capital does not supply the materials which labor
works UD into wealth, as is erroneously taught.; the
SO
Cftap. V. THE REAL FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL 81
materials of wealth are supplied by nature. But such
materials partially worked up and in the. course of
exchange are capital.
Capital does not supply or advance wages, as is erro-
neously taught. Wages are that part of the produce of
his labor obtained by the laborer. .
Capital does not maintain laborers during the progress
of their work, as is erroneously taught. Laborers are
maintained by their labor, the man who produces, in
whole or in part, anything that will exchange for articles
of maintenance, virtually producing that maintenance.
Capital, therefore, does. not limit industry, as is er-
roneously taught, the only limit to industry being the
' access to natural material. But capital may limit the
form of industry and the productiveness of industry, by
limiting the use of tools and the division of labor.
That capital may limit the form of industry is clear.
Without the factory, there could be no factory operar
tives; without the sewing machine, .no machine sewing; '
without the plow, no plowman ; and without a great capi-
tal engaged in exchange, industry could. not take the'
many special forms which are concerned with exchanges.
It is "also as clear that the want of tools must greatly
limit- the productiveness of industry. If the farmer
must use the spade because he has not capital enough
for a plow, the sickle , instead of the reaping machine-,
the flail instead of the thresher; if the machinist must
rely upon the chisel for cutting iron ; the weaver on the
hand loom, and so on, the productiveness of industry
cannot be a tithe of what it is when aided by capital in
the shape of the best tools now in use. Nor could the
dmsion of labor go further than the very rudest and
almost imperceptible beginnings, nor the e.xchanges which
make it possible extend beyond the nearest neighbors,
unless a portion of the things produced were constantly
kept in stock or in transit. Even the pursuits of hunt-
82
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Boohl,
ing, fishing, gathering nuts, and making weapons could
not be specialized so that an individual could devote
himself to any one, unless some part of what was pro-
cured by each was reserved from immediate consump-
tion, so that he who devoted himself to the procurement
of things of one kind could obtain the others as he
wanted them, and could make the good luck of one day
supply the shortcomings of the next. While to permit
the minute subdivision of labor that is characteristic of,
and necessary to, high ci\dlization, a great amount of
wealth of all descriptions must be constantly kept in
stock or in transit. To enable the resident of a civilized
community to exchange his labor at option with the
labor of those around him and with the labor of men in
the most remote parts of the globe, there must be stocks .
of- goods in warehouses, in stores, in the holds of ships,
and in railway cars, just as to enable the denizen of a
great city to draw at will a cupful of water, there must
be thousands of millions of gallons stored in reservoirs
and moving through miles of pipe.
But to say that capital may limit the form of industry,
or the productiveness of industry . is a very different
thing from saying that capital limits industry. For the
dictum of the current political economy that “capital
limits industry,” means not that capital limits the form
of labor or the productiveness of labor, but that it limits
the exertion of labor. This proposition derives its
plausibility from the assumption that capital supplies
labor with materials and maintenance — an assumption
that we have seen to be unfounded, and which is indeed
transparently preposterous the moment it is remembered
that capital is produced by labor, and hence that there
must be labor before there can be capital. Capital may
limit the form of industry and the productiveness of in-
dustry; but this is not to say that there could be no
industry without capital, any more than it is to >’av
Chap. V. THE REAL FUNCTIONS OP CAPITAL 83
that without the power loom there could be no weaving;
without the sewing machine no sewing; no cultivation
wnthout the plow; or that in a community of one, like
that of Robinson Crusoe, there could be no labor be-
cause there could be no exchange.
■ And to say that capital may limit’ the form and pro-
ductiveness of industry is a different thing from saying
that capital does. For the cases in which it can be truly
said that the form of productiveness of the industry of
a community is limited by its capital, will, I think, ap-
pear upon examination to be more theoretical than real.
It is evident that in such a country as Mexico or Tunis
the larger and more general use of capital would greatly
change the forms of industry and enormously increase
its productiveness ; and it is often said of such countries
that they need capital for the development of their re-
sources. But is there not something back of this — a
want which includes the want of capital? Is it not the
rapacity and abuses of government, the insecurity of
property, the ignorance and prejudice of the people, that
prevent the accumulation and use of capital? Is not
the real limitation in these things, and not in the want
of capital, which would not be used even if placed
there? We can, of course, imagine a community in which
the want of capital would- be the only obstacle to an
increased productiveness of labor, but it is only by
imagining a conjunction of conditions that seldom, if
ever, occurs, except by accident or as a passing phase.
A community in which capital has been swept away by
war, conflagration, or convulsion of nature, and, possibly,
a community composed of civilized people just settled
in a new land, seem to me to furnish the only examples.
Yet how quickly the capital habitually used is repro-
duced in a community that has been swept by war, has
long been noticed, while the rapid production of the
84: WAGES AND CAPITAL Booh I.
capital it can, or is disposed to use, is equally lioticeable
in the case of a new community.
I am unable to think of any other than such rare and
passing conditions in which the productiveness of labor
is really limited by the want of capital. For, although
there may be in a community individuals who from want
of capital cannot appb’’ their labor as efficiently as they
would, yet so long as there is a sufficiency of capital in
the community at large, the real limitation is not the
want of capital, but the want of its proper distribution.
If bad government rob the laborer of his capital, if un-
just laws take from the producer the wealth with whicli
he would assist production, and hand it over to those
who are mere pensioners upon industry, the real limita-
tion to the effectiveness of labor is in misgovernment.
and not in want of capital. And so of ignorance, or
custom, or other conditions which prevent the use of
capital. It is they, not the want of capital, that really
constitute the limitation. To give a circular saw to a
Terra del Fuegan, a locomotive to a Bedouin Arab, or
a sewing machine to a Flathead squaw,- would not be to
add to the efficiency of their labor. Neither does it
seem possible by giving anything else ,to add to their
capital, for any wealth beyond what they had been ac-
customed to use as capital would be consumed or suffered
to waste. It is not the want of seeds and tools that
keeps the Apache and the Sioux from cultivating the
soil. If provided with seeds and tools they would not
use them productively unless at the same time’ restrained
from wandering and taught to cultivate the soil. If all
the capital of a London were given them in their present
condition, it would simply cease to be capital, for they
would only use productively such infinitesimal part as
might assist in the chase, , and would not even use that
until all the edible part of .the stock thus showered upon
them. had been consumed. Yet such capital as they do
Chap. V. THE REAL FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL S.l)
want they manage to acquire, and in some forms in spite
of the greatest difliculties. These wild tribes hunt and
fight with the best weapons that American and English
factories produce, keeping up with the latest improve-
ments. It is only as they became civilized that they
would care for such other capital as the civilized state
requires, or that it would be of any use to them.
In the reign of George IV, some returning mission-
aries took with them to England a New Zealand chief
called Hongi. His noble appearance and beautiful
tatooing attracted much attention, and when about , to
return to his people he was presented by the monarch
and some of the religious societies with a considerable
stock of tools, agricultural instruments, and seeds. The
grateful New Zealander did use this capital in the pro-
duction of food, but it was in a manner of which his
English entertainers little dreamed. In Sydney, on his
way back, he exchanged it all for arms and ammunition,
with which, on getting home, he began war against an-
other tribe with such success that on the first battle field
three hundred of his prisoners were cooked and eaten,
Hongi having preluded the main repast by scooping ouf
and swallowing the eyes and sucking the warm blood of
hisTnortally wounded adversarj’-, the opposing chief.*
But now that their once constant wars have ceased, and
' the remnant of the Maoris have largely adopted Euro-
pean habits, there are among them many who have and
Use considerable amounts of capital.
- Likewise it would be a mistake to attribute the simple
modes of production and exchange which are resorted
to in new communities solely to a want . of capital.
These modes, which require little capital, are in them-
selves rude and inefficient, but when the conditions of
* New Zealand and . its Inhabitants. Rev. Richard Taylor.
‘ London, 1855. Chap. XXI. , ' ,
86
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Book!.
such communities are considered, they will be found in
reality the most effective. A great factorj'' with all the
latest improvements is the most efficient instrument
that has yet been devised for turning wool or cotton
into cloth, but only so where large quantities are to
be made. The cloth required for a little village could
be made with far less labor by the spinning wheel and
hand loom. A perfecting press will, for each man re-
quired, print many thousand impressions while a man
and a boy would be printing a hundred with a Stanhope
or Franklin press; yet to work off the small edition of
a country newspaper the old-fashioned press is by far
the most efficient machine. To carry occasionally two
or three passengers, a canoe is a better instrument than
a steamboat; a few sacks of flour can be transported
with less expenditure of labor by a pack horse than by
a railroad train; to put a great stock of goods into a
cross-roads store in the backwoods would be but to
waste capital. And, generally, it will be found that the
rude devices of production and exchange which obtain
among the sparse populations of new countries result
not so much from the want of capital as from inability
profitably to employ it.
As, no matter how much water is poured in, there
can never be in a bucket more than a bucketful, so no
greater amount of wealth will be used as capital than
is required by the machinery of production and ex-
change that under all the existing conditions — ^intelli-
gence, habit, security, density of population, etc. — ^best
suit the people. And I am inclined to think that as^ a
general rule this amount will be had — ^that the social
organism secretes, as it were, the necessary amount of
capital just as the human organism in a healthy condi-
tion secretes the requisite fat.
But whether the amount of capital ever does limit
the productiveness of industry, and thus fix a maximum
Chap. V.
EECAPITULATION
87
■which wages cannot exceed, it is evident that it is not
from any scarcity of capital that the poverty of the
, masses in civilized countries proceeds. For not only do
wages nowhere reach the limit fixed by the productive-
ness of industry, but wages are relatively the lowest
where capital is most abundant. The tools and machin-
ery of production are in all the most progressive coun-
tries evidently in excess of the use made of them, and
any, prospect of remunerative employment brings^ out
more than the capital needed. The bucket is not only
full; it is overflowing. So e-ddent is this, that not only
among the ignorant, but by men of high economic repu-
tation, is industrial depression attributed to the abun-
dance of machinery and the accumulation of capital;
and war, which is the destruction of capital, is looked
upon as the cause of brisk trade and high wages— an
idea strangely enough, so great is the confusion of
thought on such matters, ^countenanced by many who
hold that capital employs labor and pays wages.
Our purpose in this inquiry is to solve the problem to
which so many self-contradictory answers are given. In
ascertaining clearly what capital really is and what
capital really does, we have made the first, and an all-
important step. But it is only a first step. Let us re-
capitulate and proceed.
' We have seen that the current theory that wages de-
pend upon the ratio between the number of laborers and
the amount of capital devoted to the employment oi
labor is inconsistent with the general fact that wages and
interest do not rise and fall inversely, but conjointly.
This discrepancy having led us to an examination of
the gi'ounds of the theory, we have seen, further, that,
contrary to the current idea, wages are not drawn from
capital at all, but come directly from the produce of the
labor for which they are paid. We have seen that capi-
88
WAGES AND CAPITAL
Bookt,
tal does not advance wages or subsist laborers, but that
its functions are to assist labor in production with tools,
seed, etc., and with the wealth required to carry on ex-
changes.
We are thus irresistibly led to practical conclusions
so important as amply to justify the pains taken to
make sure of them.
For if wages are drawn, not from capital, but from
the produce of labor, the current theories as to the re-
lations of capital and labor are invalid, and all remedies,
whether proposed by professors of political economy or
workingmen, which look to the alleviation of poverty
either by the increase of capital or the restriction of the
number of laborers or the efficiency of their work, must
be condemned.
If each laborer in performing the labor really creates
the fund from which his wages are drawn, then wages
cannot be diminished by the increase of laborers, but, on
the contrary, as the efficiency of labor manifestly in-
creases with the number of laborers, the more laborers,
other things being equal, the liigher should wages be.
But this necessary proviso, “other things being equal,’’’
' brings us to a question which must be considered and
disposed of before we can further proceed. That. ques-
tion is, Do the productive powers of nature tend to
diminish with the increasing drafts made upon them by
increasing population?
BOOK II
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
CHAPTER I.-THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY. ITS UBNESIS ANL
- SUPPORT
uHAPTER II.— INFERENCES FROM FACTS
CHAPTER III.— INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY
CHAPTER IV.— DISPROOF OF THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY
Are God and Nature then at strife
That Nature lends such evil dreams ‘r
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.
— Tennyson
CHAPTER I
THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY, ITS GENESIS AND SUPPORT
Behind the theory we have been considering lies a
theory we have yet to- consider. The current doctrine
as to the derivation and law of wages finds its strongest
support in a doctrine as generally accepted — ^the doctrine
to which Malthus has given his name — ^that population
naturally tends to increase faster than subsistence.
These two doctrines, fitting in with each other, frame
the answer which the current political economy gives to
the great problem we are endeavoring to solve'
In what has preceded, the current doctrine that wages
are determined by the ratio between capital and laborers
. has; I think, been shown to be so utterly baseless as to
excite’ surprise as to how it could so generally and so
long obtain. It is not to be wondered at that such a
theory should have arisen in a state of society where the
great body of laborers seem to depend for'employment
and wages upon a separate class of capitalists, nor yet
that under. these conditions it should have maintained
itself among the masses of men, who rarely take the
trouble to separate the real from the apparent. But it
IS surprising that a theory which on examination ap-
pears to be so groundless could have been successively
accepted by so many acute thinkers as have during the
present century devoted their powers to the elucidation
and development 9f the science of political economy.
_ The explanation of this otherwise unaccountable fact
IS to be found in the general acceptance of the Malthu-
91
92
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Boo/;!/.
sian theory. The current theory of wages has never
been fairly put upon its trial, because, backed by the
Malthusian theorj", it has seemed in the minds of politi-
cal economists a self-evident truth. These two theories
mutually blend with, strengthen, and defend each other,
while they both derive additional support from a princi-
ple brought prominently forward in the discussions of
the theory of rent — ^viz., that past a certain point the
application of capital and labor to land yields a dimin-
ishing return. Together they ^ve such an explanation
of the phenomena presented in a highly organized and
advancing society as seems to fit all the facts, and which
has thus prevented closer investigation.
Which of these two theories is entitled to historical
precedence it is hard to say. The theory of population
was not formulated in such a way as to give it the stand-
ing of a scientific dogma until after that had been done
for the theory of wages. But they naturally spring up
and grow with each other, and were both held in a form
more or less crude long prior to any attempt to construct
a system of political economy. It is evident, from
several passages, that though he never fully developed,
it, the Malthusian theory was in rudimentary form pres-
ent in the mind of Adam Smith, and to this, it seems to
me, must be largely due the misdirection which on the
subject of wages his speculations took. But, however
this may be, so closely are the two theories connected,'
so completely do they complement each other, that
Buckle, reviewing the history of the development of po-
litical economy in his ^‘Examination of the Scotch In-
tellect during the Eighteenth Century,” attributes mainly
to Malthus the honor of "decisively proving” the cur-
rent theory of wages by advancing the current theory
of the pressure ol population upon subsistence. He says
in his "History of Civilization in England,” Vol. 3-
Chap. 5: . '
Chap. I. THE I^IALTHUSIAN THEORY Sif
“Scarcely had the Eighteenth Century passed away when it
was decisivelj' proved that the reward of labor depends solely on
two ‘things; namel}', the magnitude of that national fund out of
which all labor is paid, and the number of laborers among whom
the fund is to be divided. This vast step in our knowledge is
due, mainly, though not entirely, to Malthus, whose work on
population, besides marking an epoch in the histoiy of specula-
tive thought, has alreadj’’ produced considerable practical results,
and will probably give rise to others more considerable still. It
was published in 1798; so that Adam Smith, who died in 1790,
missed what to him would have been the intense pleasure of
seeing how, in it, his own views were expanded rather than cbr-
■ rected. Indeed, it is certain that without Smith there wouM
have been no Malthus; that is, unless Smith had laid the founda.
tion, Malthus could not have raised the superstructure.”
The famous doctrine which ever since, its enunciation
iias so powerfully influenced thought, not alone in the
province of political economy, but in regions of even
higher speculation, was formulated by Malthus in the
proposition that, as shown by the growth of the' North
American colonies, the natural tendency of population
is to double itself at least every twenty-five years, thus
increasing in a geometrical ratio, while the subsistence
that can be obtained from land “under circumstances
the most favorable to human industry could not, possibly
be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio,,
or by an addition every twenty-five years of' a quantity
equal to what it at present produces.” “The necessary
' .effects of these two different rates of increase, when
brought together,” Mr. Malthus naively goes on to say,
“will be very striking.” And thus (Chap. I) he brings
them together:
“Let us call the population of this island eleven millions; and
suppose the present produce equal to the easy support of such a'^
number. In the first -twenty-five years the population would be
twenty-Wo millions, and the food being also' doubled, the means
of subsistence would be equal to this increase. In the next
twenty-five years the population would be forty-four millions, and
the means of subsistence .only, equal to the support ,of tbirtv’^-
92
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Book IL
sian theory. The current theory of wages has never
been fairly put upon its trial, because, backed by the
Malthusian theory, it has seemed in the minds of politi-
cal economists a self-evident truth. These two theories
mutually blend with, strengthen, and defend each other,
while they both derive additional support from a princi-
ple brought prominently forward in the discussions of
the theorj’' of rent — that past a certain point the
application of capital and labor to land yields a dimin-
ishing return. Together they ^ve such an explanation
of the phenomena presented in a highly organized and
advancing society as seems to fit all the facts, and which
has thus prevented closer investigation.
Which of these two theories is entitled to historical
precedence it is hard to say. , The theorj’- of population
was not formulated in such a way as to give it the stand-
ing of a scientific dogma until after that had been done
for the theory of wages. But they naturally spring up
and grow with each other, and were both held in a fonn
more or less crude long prior to any attempt to construct ,
a system of political economy. It is evident; fro™
several passages, that though he never fully developed,
it, the Malthusian theory was in rudimentary form pres-
ent in the mind of Adam Smith, and to this, it seeins to
me, must be largely due the misdirection which on the
subject of wages his speculations took. But, however
this may be, so closely are the two theories connected,'
so completely do they complement each other, that -
Buckle, reviewing the history of the development of po-
litical economy in his “Examination of the Scotch In-
tellect during the Eighteenth Century,” attributes mainly
to Malthus the honor of “decisively proving” the cur-
rent theory of wages by advancing the current theory
of the pressure olpopulation upon subsistence. He says
in his “History of Civilization^ in England,” Vol. 3
Chap. 5:
<Jhap. I. THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY 95
do not admit of it, wliich every person capable of rea-
soning must see is wholly superfluous to the argument.” *
The essence of the Malthusian doctrine is, that popula-
tion tends to increase faster than the power of providing
food, and whether this difference be stated as a geometri-
cal ratio for population and an arithmetical ratio for
subsistence, as by Malthus; or as a constant ratio for
population and a diminishing ratio for subsistence, as
by Mill, is only a matter of statement. The vital point,
on which both agree, is, to use the words of Malthus,
“that there is a natural tendency and constant effort
in population to increase beyond the means of subsist-
ence.”
The Malthusian doctrine, as at present held, may be
thus stated in its strongest and least objectionable form:
That population, constantly tending to increase, must,
when unrestrained, ultimately press against the limits
of subsistence, not as against a fixed, but as against an
elastic barrier, which makes the procurement of subsist-
ence progressively more and more difficult. And thus,
wherever reproduction has had time to. assert its power,
and 'is unchecked by prudence, there must exist that de-
gree- of want which will keep population within the
bounds of subsistence.
Although in reality not more repugnant to the sense
of harmonious adaptation by creative beneficence and
wisdom than the complacent no-theory which throws
the responsibility for poverty and its concomitants upon
the inscrutable decrees of Providence, without attempt-
* Principles of Political Economy, Book II, Chap. IX, Sec. VI.
—Yet notwithstanding what Mill says, it is clear that Malthus
^ himself lays great stress upon his geometrical and arithmetical
ratios, and it is also probable that it is to these ratios that Mal-
thus is largely indebted for his fame, as they supplied one of
those high-sounding formulas that with many peop.’e carry far
more weight than the clearest reasoning.
94 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE BooTcII,
three millions. In the next period the population "would be equal
to eightj'-eight millions, and the means of subsistence just equal
to the support of half that number. And at the conclusion of
the first century, the population %vould be a hundred and seventy-
six millions, and the means of subsistence only "eaual to the sup-
port of fifty-five millions; leaving a population of a hundred and
twenty-one millions totally unprovided for.
“Taking the whole earth instead of this island, emigration
would of course be excluded; and supposing the present popula-
tion equal to a thousand millions, the human species would
increase as the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and sub-
sistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. In two centuries the popula-
tion would be to the means of subsistence as 256 to 9; in three
centuries, 4,096 to 13, and in two thousand years the difference
would be almost incalculable.”
Such a result is of course prevented by the physical
fact that no more people can exist than can find subsist-
ence, and hence Malthus' conclusion is, that this tend-
ency of population to indefinite increase must be held
back either by moral restraint upon the reproductive '
faculty, or by the various causes which increase mor-
tality, which he resolves into vice and misery. Such
causes as prevent propagation he styles the preventive
check; such causes as increase mortality he styles the
positive check. This is the famous Malthusian doctrine,
as promulgated by Malthus himself in the ^^Essay on
Population.”
It is not worth while to dwell upon the fallacy in-
volved in the assumption of geometrical and arithmetical
rates of increase, a play upon proportions which hardly
rises to the dignity of that in the familiar puzzle of the
hare and the tortoise, in which the hare is made to
chase the tortoise through all eternity without coming
up with him. For this assumption is not necessarjr to
the Malthusian doctrine, or at least is expressly repudi-
ated by some of those' who fully accept that doctrine;
as, for instance, John Stuart Mill, who speaks of it as
“an unlucky attempt "to give precision to things which
Jhap. I.
THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY
95
do not admit of it, wliich eveiy person capable of rea-
soning must see is wholly superfluous to the argument/’ *
The essence of the Malthusian doctrine is, that popula-
tion tends to increase faster than the power of providing
food, and whether this difference be stated as a geometri-
cal ratio for population and an arithmetical ratio for
subsistence, as by INIalthus; or as a constant ratio for
population and a diminishing ratio for subsistence, as
by Mill, is onl}’- a matter of statement. The vital point,
on which both agree, is, to use the words of Malthus,
“that there is a natural tendency and constant effort
in population to increase beyond the means of subsist-
ence.”
The Malthusian doctrine, as at present held, may be
thus stated in its strongest arid least objectionable form;
That population, constantly tending to increase, must,
when unrestrained, ultimately press against the limits
of subsistence, not as against a fixed, but as against an
elastic barrier, which makes the procurement of subsist-
ence progressively more and more diflScult. And thus,
wherever reproduction has had time to assert its power,
and ’is unchecked by prudence, there must exist that de-
gree of want which will keep population within the
bounds of subsistence.
Although in reality not more repugnant to the sense
of harmonious adaptation by creative beneficence and
wisdom than the complacent no-theory which throws
the responsibility for poverty and its concomitants upon
the inscrutable decrees of Providence, without attempt-
* Principles of Political Economy, Book II, Chap. IX, Sec. VI.
— ^Yet notwithstanding what Mill says, it is clear that Malthus
himself lays great stress upon his geometrical and arithmetical
ratios, and it is also probable that it is to these ratios that Mal-
thus is largely indebted ,for his fame, as they supplied one of
those high-sounding formulas that with many people -carry far
more weight than the clearest reasoning.
96 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE Booh 11.
ing to trace them, this theory, in avowedly making vice'
and suffering the necessary results of a natural instinct
with which are linked the purest and sweetest affections,
comes rudely in collision with ideas deeply rooted in the
human mind, and it was, as soon as formally promuh
gated, fought with a bitterness in which zeal was often
more manifest than logic. But it has triumphantly
withstood the ordeal, and in spite of the refutations of
the Godwins, the denunciations of the Cobbetts, and all
the shafts that argument, sarcasm, ridicule, and senti-
ment could direct against it, to-day it stands in the world
of thought as an accepted truth, .which compels the
recognition even of those who would fain disbelieve it, .
The causes of its triumph, the sources of its strength,
are not obscure. Seemingly backed by an indisputable
arithmetical truth — that a continuously increasing popu-
lation must eventually exceed the capacity of the earth
to furnish food or even standing room, the Malthusian
theory is supported by analogies in the animal and vege-
table kingdoms, where life everywhere beats wastefully
against the barriers that hold its different species in ,
check — analogies to which the course of modem thought,
in leveling distinctions between different forms of lifOj
has given a greater and greater weight; and it is appar-
ently corroborated by many obvious facts, such as the
prevalence of poverty, 'vdce, and misery amid dense
populations; the general effect of material progress in in-
creasing population without relieving pauperism; the
rapid gro'^h of numbers in newly settled countries and
the evident retardation of increase in more densely set-
tled countries by the mortality among the class con-
demned to want. .
The Malthusian theory furnishes a general principle
which accounts for these and similar facts, and accounts
for them in a. way which hanhonizes with the doctrine
that wages are drawn from capital, and with all the prin-
Chap. 1.
THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY
97
ciples that are deduced from it. According to the cur-
rent doctrine of wages, wages fall as increase in the
number of laborers necessitates a’ more minute division
of capital; according to the Malthusian theory, poverty
appears as increase in population necessitates the more
minute division of subsistence. It requires but the
identification of capital vdth subsistence, and number of
laborers with population, an identification made in the
current treatises on political economy, where "the terms
are often converted, to make the two propositions as
identical formally as they are substantially.* And thus
it is, as stated by Buckle in the passage previously
quoted, that the theory of population advanced by Mal-
thus has appeared to prove decisively the theory- of
wages advanced by Smitli.
Ricardo, who a few years subsequent to the publica-
tion of the “Essay on Population” corrected the mistake
into which Smith had fallen as to the nature and cause
■ of rent, furnished the Malthusian theory, an additional
support by calling attention to the fact that rent would
increase as the necessities of increasing population forced
- cultivation, to less and less productive lands, or to less
and less productive points on the same lands, thus ex-
plaining the rise of rent. In this way was formed a
triple combination, by which the Malthusian theory has
been buttressed on both sides — the previously received
doctrine of wages and the subsequently received doc-
trine of rent exhibiting in this view but special examples
of the operation of the general principle to which the
name of Malthus has been attached-^the fall in wages
and the rise in rents which come with increasing popular
- ' * The effect of the Malthusian doctrine upon the definitions of
capital may, I think, be seen by comparing (see pp. 33, 34, 35)
' the definition of Smith, who wrote prior to Malthus, with the
definitions of Ricardo, McCulloch and Mill, who wrote subse-
quently.’ . . ..
9S POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE Book II.
tion being but modes in which the pressure of population
upon subsistence shows itself.
Tlius taking its place in the very framework of politi-
cal economy (for the science as currently accepted has
undergone no material change or improvement since the
time of Ricardo, though in some minor points it has
been cleared and illustrated), the Malthusian theor}^,
though repugnant to sentiments before alluded to, is not
repugnant to other ideas which, in older countries at
least, generally prevail among the working classes; but,
on the contrary, like the theory of wages by which it is
supported and in turn supports, it harmonizes with
them. To the mechanic or operative the cause of low
wages and of the inability to get empIo3’^ment is obvi-
ously the competition caused by the pressure of numbers,
and in the squalid abodes of poverty what seems clearer
than that there are too many people?
But the great cause of the triumph of this theory is,
that, instead of menacing any vested right or antagoniz-
ing any powerful interest, it is eminently soothing and
reassuring to the classes who, wielding the power of
wealth, largely dominate thought. At a time when old
supports were falling away, it came to the rescue of the
special privileges by which a few monopolize so much
of the good things of this world, proclaiming a natural
cause for the want and misery which, if attributed to
political institutions, must condemn every government
under which they exist. The ‘'Essay on Population”
was avowedly a reply to William, Godwin's “Inquiry con-
cerning Political Justice,” a work asserting the principle
of human equality; and its purpose was to justify exist-
ing inequality by shifting the responsibility for it from’
human institutions' to the laws of the Creator. There *
was nothing new in this, for Wallace, nearly forty years -
before, had brought forward the danger of excessive
■multiplication as the answer to the demands of justice
Ckap. I. THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY 99
for an equal distribution of Avealth; but the circum-
stances of the times were such as to make the same
idea, wlien brought forward b.y Malthus, peculiarly
gratoful to a powerful class, in whom an intense fear of
any questioning of the existing state of things had been
generated by the outburst of the French Revolution.
Kow, as then, the IMalthusian doctrine parries the de-
mand for reform, and shelters selfishness from question
and from conscience by the interposition of an inevitable
necessity. It furnishes a philosophy b3'- which Dives as
he feasts can shut out the image of Lazarus who faints
with hunger at his door; by which wealth may com-
placentlj’- button up its pocket when poverty asks an
alms, and the rich Christian bend on Sunda^’^s in a nicely
uplmlstered pew to implore the good gifts of the All
Father without any feeling of responsibility for the
squalid misery that is festering but a square away. For
poverty, want, and starvation are by this theory’- not
chargeable either to indi^'idual greed or to social mal-
adjustments; the}’’ are the inevitable results of universal
laws, vdth which, if it were not impious, it were as hope-
less to quarrel as with the law of gravitation. In this
view, he who in the midst of want has accumulated
wealth, has but fenced in 'a little oasis from the driving
sand which else would have overwhelmed it. He has
gained for himself, but has hurt nobody. And even if
the rich were literally to obey the injunctions of Christ
and divide their wealth among the poor, nothing would
he gained. Population would be increased, only to press
again' upon the limits of subsistence or capital, and the
equality that would be produced would be but the equal-
ity of common' misery. And thus reforms which would
interfere with the interests of any powerful class are
discouraged' as hopeless. As the moral law forbids any
forestalling of the methods by which the natural law
'gets rid of siurplus population and thus holds in check
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Booh 11
iOO
a tendency to increase potent enough to pack the sur-
face of the globe with human beings as sardines are
packed in a box, nothing can really be done, either by
individual or by combined effort, to extirpate poverty,
save to trust to the efficacy of education and preach the
necessity of prudence,
A theory that, falling in wdth the habits of thought of
the poorer classes, thus justifies the greed of the rich
and the selfishness of the powerful, will spread quickly
and strike its roots deep. This has been the case with
the theory advanced by Malthus.
And of late years the Malthusian theory has received
new support in the rapid change of ideas as to the origin
of man and the genesis pf species. That Buckle was
right in saying that the promulgation of the Malthusian
theory marked an epoch in the history of speculative -
thought could, it seems to me, be easily shoum; yet to
trace its influence in the higher domains of philosophy,
of which Buckle's own work is an example, would,
though extremely interesting, carry us beyond the scope
of this investigation. But how much be reflex and how
much original, the support which is given to the Malthur
sian theory by the new philosophy' of development, now
rapidly spreading in every direction, must be noted in
any estimate of the sources from which this theory de-
rives its present strength. As in political economy,' the
support received from the doctrine of wages and the
doctrine of rent combined to raise the Malthusian theory
to the rank of. a central truth, so the extension of similar
ideas to the development of- life in all its forms has the
effect of giving it a still higher and more impregnable
position. Agassiz, .w^ho, to the day of his death, was a
strenuous opponent of the new philosophy, spoke of
Darwinism as "Malthus all over,-”-*’ and Darwin himself.
* Address before Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture,
1872. Report U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1873-
Ch<xv- 1- THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY 101
says the struggle for existence “is the doctrine of Mal-
thus applied with manifold force to the whole animal
and vegetable kingdoms.”*
It does -not, however, seem to me exactly correct to
saj’- that the theory of development by natural selection
or sundval of the fittest is extended Malthusianism, for
the doctrine of Malthus did not originally and does not
necessarily involve the idea of progression. But this was
soon added to it. McCullochf attributes to the “prin-
ciple of increase” social improvement and the progress
of the arts, and declares that the poverty that it engen-
ders acts as a powerful stimulus to the development of
industry, the extension of science and the accumulation
of wealth by the upper and middle classes, without which
stimulus society would quickly sink into apathy and de-
cay. What is this but the recognition in regard to'
human society of the developing effects of the “struggle
for existence” and “survival of the fittest,” which we
are now told on the authority of natural science have
been the means which Nature has employed to bring
forth, all the infinitely diversified and wonderfully
adapted forms which the teeming life of the globe as-
sumes? What is it but the recognition of the force,
which, seemingly cruel and remorseless, has yet in the
Course of unnumbered ages developed the higher from
the lower type, differentiated the man and the monkey,
and made the Nineteenth Century succeed the age of ' ■
stone? ' ■ • . '
Thus commended and seemingly proved, thus linked
and buttressed, the Malthusian theory — the doctrine
that poverty is due to the pressure of population against
subsistence, or, to put it in its other form, the doctrine
"that the tendency to increase in the number of laborers'
must always tend to reduce wages to the minimum on
* Origin of Species, Chap. III.
t Note JV to Wealth of Nations.
/
102 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE BooVAL
•u’hich laborers can reproduce — is now generally accepted
as an unquestionable truth, in the light of which social
phenomena are to be explained, just as for ages the
phenomena of the sidereal heavens were explained upon
the supposition of the fixity of the earth, or the facts of
geology upon that of the literal inspiration of the Mosaic
record. If authority were alone to be considered, for-
mally to deny this doctrine w’ould require almost as much
audacity as that of the colored preacher who recently
started out on a crusade against the opinion that the
earth moves around the sun, for in one form or another,
the Malthusian doctrine has received in the intellectual
world an almost universal indorsement, and in the best
as in the most common literature of the day may be seen
cropping out in every direction. It is indorsed by econo-
mists and by statesmen, by historians and by natural
investigators; by social science congresses and by trade
unions; by churchmen and by materialists; by conserva-
tives of the strictest sect and by the most radical of
radicals. It is held and habitually reasoned from by
many who never heard of Malthus and who have not
the slightest idea of what his theory is.
Nevertheless, as the grounds of the current theory of
w’ages have vanished when subjected to a candid exami-
nation, so, do I believe, will vanish the grounds of this,
its twdn. In proving that wages are not drawn from
capital we have raised this Anteeus from the earth.
CHAPTER II
INFERENCES FROM FACTS
The general acceptance of the Malthusian theory and
the high authority by which it is indorsed have seemed
to me to make it expedient to review its grounds and
the causes which have conspired to give it such a domi-
nating influence in the discussion of social questions.
But when we subject the theory itself to the test of
straightforward analysis, it will, I think, be found as
utterly untenable as the current theory of wages.
In the first place, the facts which are marshaled in
support of this theory do not prove it, and the analogies
do not countenance it.
And in the se'cond place, there are facts which con-
clusively disprove it.
I go to the heart of the matter in saying that there is
no warrant, either in experience or analogy, for the as-
sumption that there is any tendency in population to
increase faster than subsistence. The facts cited to
show this simply show that where, owing to the sparse-
ness of population, as in new countries, or where, owing
to the unequal distribution of wealth, as among the
pporer classes in old countries, human life is occupied
■with the physical necessities of existence, the tendency
to reproduce is at a rate which would, were it to go on
unchecked, some time exceed subsistence. But it is
not a- legitimate inference from this that the tendency
to reproduce would show itself in the same force where
population was sufficiently dense and wealth distributed
■w^ith sufficient evenness to lift a whole community above
104
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Book II,
the necessity of devoting their energies to a struggle foi
mere existence. Nor can it be assumed that the tend-
ency to reproduce, by causing poverty, must prevent
the existence of such a community; for this, manifestly,
would be assuming the very point at issue, and reason-
ing in a circle. And even if it be admitted that the
tendency to multiply must ultimately produce poverty,
it cannot from this alone be predicated of existing pov-
erty that it is due to this cause, until it be shown that
there are no other causes which can account for it — a
thing in the present state of government, laws, and
customs, manifestly impossible.
This is abundantly shown in the “Essay on Popula-
tion^' itself. This famous book, which is much oftener
spoken of than read, is still well worth perusal, if only
as a literary curiosity. The contrast between the merite
of the book itself and the effect it has produced, or is at
least credited with (for though Sir James Stewart, Mr.
Townsend, and others, share with Malthus the glory of
discovering “the principle of population," it was the
publication of the “Essay on Population" that brought
it prominently forward), is, it seems to me, one of the
most remarkable things in the history of literature; and
it is easy to imderstand how Godwin, whose “Political
Justice" provoked the “Essay on Population," should
until his old age have disdained a reply. It begins with
the assumption that population tends to increase in a
geometrical ratio, while subsistence can at best be made
to increase only in an arithmetical ratio — an assumption
just as valid, and no more so, than it would be, from the
fact that a puppy doubled the len^h of his tail while
he added so many pounds to his weight, to assert a geo-
metric progression of tail and an arithmetical progres-
sion of weight. And, the inference from the assumption
is just such as Swift in satire might have credited to the
savans of a previously dogless island, who, by bringing
Chav. n.
INFERENCES FROSI FACTS
105
these two ratios together, might deduce the vcr\^ "strik-
ing consequence” that by the time the dog grew to a
weight of fifty pounds his tail would be over a mile long,
and extremely difficult to ivag, and hence recommend
the prudential check of a bandage as the only alterna-
tive to the positive check of constant amputations.
Commencing with such an absurdity, the essay includes
a long argument for the imposition of a duty on tlie im-
portation, and the payment of a bountj’- for the exporta-
tion of corn, an idea that has long since been sent to the
limbo of exploded fallacies. And it is marked through-
out the argumentative portions by passages which show
on the part of the reverend gentleman the most ridicu-
lous incapacity for logical thought — as, for instance,
that if wages were to be increased from eighteen' pence
or two shillings per day to five shillings, meat would
necessarily increase in price from eight or nine pence to
two or three shillings per pound, and the condition of
the laboring classes would therefore not be improved, a
statement to which I can think of no parallel so close as
a proposition I once heard a certain printer gravely ad-
vance— that because an author, whom he had known,
was forty years old when he was twenty, the author
must now be eighty years old because he (the printer)
was forty. This confusion of thought does not merely
crop out here and there; it characterizes the whole
work.* The main body of the book is taken up with
what is in reality a refutation of the theory which the
*Malthus’ other works, though written after he became fam-
ous, made no mark, and are treated with contempt even by
those who find in the Essay a great discovery. The Encyclo-
pasdia Britannica, for instance, though fully accepting the Mal-
thusian theory, says of Malthus’ Political Economy: “It is very
ill arranged, and is in no respect either a practical or a scientific
exposition of^the subject. It is in great part occupied with ar
examination of parts of Mr. Ricardo’s peculiar doctrines, and
with an inquiry into the nature and causes of value. Nothing,
£06
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Book II.
book advances, for Malthus’ review of what he calls
the positi\’-e checks to population is simply the showing
that the results which he attributes to over-population
actually arise from other causes. Of all the cases cited,
and pretty much the whole globe is passed over in the
survey, in wdiich vice and miserj’- check increase by
limiting marriages or shortening the term of human life,
there is not a single case in which the vice and misery
can be traced to an actual increase in the number of
mouths over the power of the accompanying hands to
feed them; but in every case the vice and misery are
shown to spring either from unsocial ignorance and
rapacity, or from bad government, unjust laws or de-
structive warfare.
Nor what Malthus failed to show has any one since
him shown. The globe may be surveyed and history
may be reviewed in vain for any instance of a consider-
able country* in which poverty and want can be fairly
-attributed to the pressure of an increasing population
Whatever be the possible dangers involved in the power
of human increase, they have never yet appeared.
Whatever may some time be, this never yet has been the
evil that has afflicted mankind? Population always
tending to overpass the limit of subsistence! How is it,
then, that this globe of ours, after all the thousands, and
it is now thought millions, of years that man has been
however, can be more unsatisfactory than these discussions. In
truth Mr. Malthus never had any clear or accurate perception of
Mr. Ricardo’s theories, or of the principles which determine the
value in exchange of different articles.”
* I say considerable country, because there may be small islands,
such as Pitcaim’s' Island, cut off from communication with the
rest of the world and consequently from the exchanges which
are necessary to the improved modes of production resorted to
as population becomes dense, which- may seem to offer examples
in point. A moment’s reflection, however, will show that these
exceptional cases are not in point.
Chav. IJ. ESTFERENGBS PROM FACTS ^ 107
upon the earth, is yef so thinly populated? How is it,
then, that so many of the hives of human life are now
deserted — ^that once cultivated fields are rank with
jungle, and the wild beast licks her cubs where once
were busy haunts of men?
It is a fact, that, as we count our increasing millions,
we are apt to lose sight of — ^nevertheless it is a fact —
that in what we know of the world’s history decadence
of population is as common as increase. Whether the
, aggregate population of the earth is now greater than at
any previous epoch is a speculation which can deal only
with guesses. Since Montesquieu, in the early part of
the last century, asserted, what was then probably -the
prevailing impression, that the population of the earth
"had, since the Christian era, greatly declined, opinion
has run the other way. But the tendency of recent in-
vestigation and exploration has been to give greater
credit to what have been deemed the exaggerated ac-
counts of ancient historians and travelers, and to reveal
indications of denser populations and more advanced
civilizations than had before been suspected, as well as
of a higher antiquity in the human race. And in basing
our estimates of population upon the development of
trade, the advance of the arts, and the size of cities, we
are apt to underrate the density of population which the
intensive cultivations, characteristic of the earlier civili-
zations, are capable of maintaining — especially where
irrigation is resorted to. As we may see from the closely
cultivated districts of China and Europe a very great
population of simple habits can readily exist with very
little commerce and a much lower stage of those arts in
which modern progress has been most marked, and
without that tendencj’’ to concentrate in cities which
modern populations show.*
* As may bo seen from the map in H. H. Bancroft’s “Native
Races,” the State of Vera Cruz is not one of those parts of
110 POPULATIOJSr AND SUBSISTENCE Boohil.
never been into uninhabited lands — ^their march has
always been a battle with some other people previously
in possession; behind dim empires vaguer ghosts of em-
pire loom. That the population of the world must have
had its small beginnings we confidently infer, for we
know that there was a geologic era when human life
could not have existed, and we cannot believe that men
sprang up all at once, as from the dragon teeth sowed
by Cadmus; yet through long vistas, where history, tra-
dition and antiquities shed a light that is lost in faint
glimmers, we may discern large populations. And dur-
ing these long periods the principle of population has not -
been strong enough fully to settle the world, or even so
far as we can clearly see materially to increase its ag-
gregate population. Compared with its capacities to
support human life the earth as a whole is yet most
sparsely populated.
There is another broad, general fact which cannot fail
to strike any one who, thinking of this subject, extends
his view beyond modern society. Malthusianism predi-
cates a universal law — that the natural tendency of
population is to outrun subsistence. If there be such a
law, it must, wherever population has attained a certain
density, become as obvious as any of the great natural
laws which have been everywhere recognized. How is
it, then, that neither in classical creeds and codes, nor
in those of the Jews, the Egyptians, the Hindoos, the
Chinese, nor any of4he peoples who have lived in close
association and have built up creeds and codes, do we
find any injunctions to the practice of the prudential re-
straints of Malthus; but that, on the contrary, the wis-
dom of the centuries, the religions of the world, have
always inculcated ideas of civic and religious duty the
very reverse of those which the current political econ-
omy enjoins, and which Annie Besant is now trying
to popularize in England?
Chav. tl. INFERENCES FROM FACTS ill
And it must be remembered that there have been so- ,
cieties in which the community guaranteed to every
raember employment and subsistence. John Stuart Mill
says (Book II, Chap. XII, Sec. 2) , that to do this with-
out state regulation of marriages and births, would be
to produce a state of general misery and degradation.
^‘These consequences,” he says, “have been so often and
so clearly pointed out by authors of reputation that ig-
norance of them on the part of educated persons is no
longer pardonable.” Yet in Sparta, in Peru, in Para-
guay, as in the industrial communities which appear
almost everywhere to have constituted the primitive
agricultural organization, there seems to have been an
utter ignorance of these dire consequences of a natural
tendency.
Besides the broad, general facts I have cited, there
are facts of common knowledge which seem utterly in-
consistent with such an overpowering tendency to mul-
tiplication. If the tendency to reproduce be so strong
as Malthusianism supposes, how is it that families so
often become extincb— families in which want is un-
known? How is it, then, that when every premium is
offered by hereditary titles and hereditary possessions,
not alone to the principle of increase, but to the pres-
ervation of genealogical knowledge and the proving up
of descent, that in such an aristocracy as that of Eng-
land, so many peerages should lapse, and the House of
Lords be kept up from century to century only by fresh
creations?
For the solitary example of a family that has sm-
vived any great lapse of time, even though assured of
subsistence and honor, we must go to unchangeable
China. The descendants of Confucius still exist there,
and enjoy peculiar privileges and consideration, form-
Jng, in fact, the only hereditary aristocracy. On the
presumption that population tends to double every
lOS
POPOLATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Booh 11,
Be this as it may, the only continent "which we can be
sure now contains a larger population than ever before
is Europe. But this is not true of all parts of Europe.
Certainly Greece, the Mediterranean Islands, and Tur-
key in Europe, probably Italy, and possibly Spain, haye
contained larger populations than now, and this may be
likewise true of Northwestern and parts of Central and
Eastern Europe.
America also has increased in population during the
time we know of it; but this increase is not so great as is
popularly supposed, some estimates giving to Peru alone
at the time of tlie discovery a greater population than
now exists on the whole contintat of South America.
And all the indications are that previous to the discov-
ery the population of America had been declining
What great nations have run their course, what empires
have arisen and fallen in ^That new world which is the
old,” we can only imagine. But fragments of massive
ruins yet attest a grander pre-Incan civilization; amid
the tropical forests of Yucatan and. Central America are
the remains of great cities forgotten ere the Spanish
conquest; Mexico, as Cortez found it, showed the super-
imposition of barbarism upon a higher social - develop-
ment, while through a great part of what is now the
United States are scattered mounds which prove a once
relatively dense population, and here and there, as in
the Lake Superior copper mines, are traces of higher arts
Mexico noticeable for its antiquities. Yet Hugo Fink, of Cor-
dova, writing to the" Smithsonian Institution (Reports 1870), says
there is hardly a foot in the whole State in which by excavation
either a broken obsidian knife or a broken piece of pottery is
not found; that the whole country is intersected with parallel
lines of stones intended to keep the earth from washing away
in the rainy season, which show that even the very poorest land
was put into requisition, and that it is impossible to resist the
conclusion that the ancient population was at least as dense as
it is .’at present in the most populous districts of Europe.
Cnap. II.
INFERENCES PROM FACTS
109
than were known to the Indians with whom the whites
came in contact.
As to Africa there can be no question. Northern
Africa can contain but a fraction of the population that
it had in ancient times; the Nile Valley once held an
enormously greater population than now, while south -
of the Sahara there is nothing to show increase within
historic times, and widespread depopulation was cer-
tainly caused by the slave trade. ,
As for Asia, which even now contains more than half ,
the human race, though -it is not much more than hall
as densely populated as Europe, there are indications
that both India and China once contained larger popu-
lations than now, while that great breeding ground of
men from which issued swarms that overran both coun-
tries and sent great waves of people rolling upon Europe,
must have been once far more populous- But the most
marked change is in Asia Minor', Syria, Babylonia, Per-
sia, and in short that vast district which yielded to the
conquering arms of Alexander. Where were once great
-cities and teeming populations are now squalid villages
and barren wastes.
It is somewhat strange that among all the theories
that have been raised, that of a fixed quantity to human
, life on this earth has not been broached. It would at
least better accord with historical facts than that of the
constant tendency of population to outrun subsistence.
It is clear that population has here ebbed and there
flowed; its centers have changed; new nations have
arisen and old nations- declined; sparsely settled districts
have become populous and populous districts have lost .
their population; but as far back as we can go without
abandoning ourselves wholly to inference, there is noth-
ing to show continuous increase, ,or even clearly to show
an aggregate increase from time to time. The advance
of the pioneers of peoples has, so far as "'e can discern.
no
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Book il.
never been into uninliabited lands-— their march has
always been a battle with some other people previously
in possession; behind dim empires vaguer ghosts of em-
pire loom. That the population of the world must have
had its small beginnings we confidently infer, for we
know that there was a geologic era when human life
could not have existed, and we cannot believe that men
sprang up all at once, as from the dragon teeth sowed
by Cadmus; yet through long vistas, where history, tra-
dition and antiquities shed a light that is lost in faint
glimmers, we may discern large populations. And dur-
ing these long periods the principle of population has not '
been strong enough fully to settle the world, or even so
far as we can clearly see materially to increase its ag-
gregate population. Compared with its capacities to
support human life the earth as a whole is yet most
sparsely populated.
There is another broad, general fact which cannot fail
to strike any one who, thinking of this subject, extends
his view beyond modern society. Malthusianism predi-
cates a universal law — ^that the natural tendency of
population is to outrun subsistence. If there be such a
law, it must, wherever population has attained a certain
density, become as obvious as any of the great natural
laws which have been everywhere recognized. How is
it, then, that neither in classical creeds and codes, nor
in those of the Jews, the Egyptians, the Hindoos, the
Chinese, nor any of^he peoples who have lived in close
association and have built up creeds and codes, do w'e
find any injunctions to the practice of the prudential re-
straints of Malthus; but that, on the contrary, the wis-
dom of the centuries, the religions of the world, have
always inculcated ideas of civic and religious duty the
v’-erj’- reverse of those which the current political econ-
omy enjoins, and which Annie Besant is now trying
to popularize in England?
Chav. 11. INFERENCES PROM FACTS ill
And it must be remembered that there have been so- ,
cieties in which the community guaranteed to every
member employment and subsistence. John Stuart Mill
says (Book II, Chap. XII, Sec. 2) , that to do this with-
out state regulation of marriages and births, would be
to produce a state of general misery and degradation.
■"These consequences,” he says, "have been so often and
so clearly pointed out b}’’ authors of reputation that ig-
norance of them on the part of educated persons is no
longer pardonable.” Yet in Sparta, in Peru, in Para-
guay, as in the industrial communities which appear
almost everywhere to have constituted the primitive
agricultural organization, there seems to have been an
utter ignorance of these dire consequences of a natural
tendency.
Besides the broad, general facts I have cited, there
are facts of common knowledge which seem utterly in-
consistent with such an overpowering tendency to mul-
tiplication. If the tendency to reproduce be so strong
as Malthusianism supposes, how is it that families so
often become extinct — families in which want is un-
kno'wn? How is it, then, that when every premium is
offered by hereditary titles and hereditary possessions,
not alone to the principle of increase, but to the pres-
ervation of genealogical knowledge and the proving up
of descent, that in such an aristocracy as that of Eng-
land, so many peerages should lapse, and the House of
Lords be kept up from century to century only by fresh
creations?
For the solitary example of a family that has sur-
vived any great lapse of time, even though assured of
subsistence and honor, we must go to unchangeable
China. The descendants of Confucius still exist there,
•and enjoy peculiar privileges and consideration, form-
ing, in fact, the only hereditary aristocracy. On the
presumption that population tends to double every
112
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Book 11.
fewenty-five years, they should, in 2,150 years after the
death of Confucius, have amounted to 859,559,193,106,-
709,670,198,710,528 souls. Instead of any such unimag-
inable number, the descendants of Confucius, 2,350
years after his death, in the reign of Kanghi numbered
11,000 males, or say 22,000 souls. This is quite a dis-
crepancy, and is the more striking ■when it is remem-
bered that the esteem in which this family is held on
account of their ancestor, 'The Most Holy Ancient
Teacher,” has prevented the operation of the positive
check, while the maxims of Confucius inculcate any-
thing but the prudential check.
Yet, it may be said, that even this increase* is a great
one. Twenty-two thousand persons descended from a
single pair in 2,150 years is far short of the Malthusian
rate. Nevertheless, it is suggestive of possible over-
crowding.
But consider. Increase of descendants does not show
increase of population. It could only do this when the
breeding was in and in. Smith and his w'ife have a son
and daughter, who marry respectively some one else’s
daughter and son,' and each have two children. Smith
and his wife would thus have four grandchildren; but
there wmuld be in the one generation no greater number
‘than in the other — each child would have four grand-
parents. And supposing this process were to go on, the
line of descent might ' constantly spread out into hun-
dreds, thousands and millions; but in each generation of
descendants, there ■u'ould be no more individuals than in
any previous generation of ancestors. The web of gen-
erations is like lattice-work or the diagonal threads in
cloth. Comihencing at any point at the top, the e5’’e
follows lines which at The bottom widely diverge; but
beginning at any point at the bottom, the lines du erge
in the same way to the top. How many children a man
mav have is problematical. But that he had two par-
Chap. II. INFERENCES FROM FACTS 113
ents is certain, and that these again had twe parents
each- is also certain. Follow this geometrical progres-
sion through a few generations and see if it does not lead
to quite as “striking consequences” as Mr, Malthus’
peopling of the solar systems.
Ent from such considerations as these let us advance
'o a more definite inquiry. I assert that the cases com-
monly cited as instances of over-population will not
bear investigation. India, China, and Ireland furnish
the strongest of these cases. In each of these countries,
large numbers have perished by starvation and large
classes are reduced to abject -misery or compelled to
emigi’ate. But is this really due to over-population?
Comparing total population with total area, India and
China are far from being the most densely populated
countries of the world. According to the estimates of
.MM. Behm and Wagner, the population of India is but
132 to the square mile and that of China 119, whereas
Saxony has a population of 442 to the square mile ; Bel-
gium 441 ; England 422 ; the Netherlands 291 ; Italy 234
and Japan 233.* There are thus in both countries large
areas unused or not fully used, but even in their more
densely populated districts there can be -no doubt that
either could maintain a much greater population in a
much higher degree of comfort, for in -both countries is
labor applied to production in the rudest and most in-
efficient ways, and in both countries great natural re-
sources are wholly neglected. This arises from- no
* I take these figures from the Smithsonian Report for 1873,
leaving out decimals. MM. Behm and Wagner put the popula-
tion of China at 446,500,000, though there are some who contend
that it does not exceed 150,000,000.' They put the population of
Hither India at 206,225,580, giving 132.29 to the square mile; of
Ceylon at 2,405,287 or 97.36 to the square mile; of Further India
at 21,018,062, or 27.94 to the square mile. They estimate the
population/ of the world. at 1,377,000,000, an average of 26.64 ta
the square mile.
114
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Book II,
innate deficiency in the people, for th.e Hindoo, as com-
parative philology has shown, is of our own blood, and
China possessed a high degree of civilization and the
rudiments of the most important modern inventions
when our ancestors were wandering savages. It arises
from the form which the social organization has in both
countries taken, which has shackled productive power
and robbed industry of its reward.
In India from time immemorial, the working classes
have been ground down by exactions and oppressions
into a condition of helpless and hopeless degradation.
For ages and ages the cultivator of the soil has esteemed
himself happy if, of his produce, the extortion of the
strong hand left him enough to support life and furnish
seed; capital could nowhere be safely accumulated or to
any considerable extent be used to assist production ; all
wealth that could be wrung from the people was in the
possession. of princes who were little better than robber
chiefs quartered on the country, or in that of their
farmers or favorites, and was wasted in useless or worse
than useless luxury, while religion, sunken into an elab-
orate and terrible superstition, tyrannized over the mind
as physical force did over the bodies of men. Under
these conditions, the only arts that could advance were
those that ministered to the ostentation and luxury of
the great. The elephants of the rajah blazed with gold
of exquisite workmanship, and the umbrellas that sym-
bolized his regal power glittered with gems; but the
plow of the ryot was only a sharpened stick. The ladies
of the rajah’s harem wrapped themselves- in muslins so
fine as to take the name of woven wind, but the tools of
the artisan were of the poorest and rudest description
and commerce could only be carried on, as it were, by
stealth.
Is it not clear that this tyranny and insecurity have
produced the want and starvation of India; and not, as ,
Chap. II.
INFERENCES FROM FACTS
115
according to Buckle, the' pressure of population upon
subsistence that has produced the want, and, the want
the tyranny * Says the Rev. William Tennant, a chap-
lain in the service of the East India Company, writing
in 1796, two years before the publication of the ^‘Essay
on Population;’’
"When we reflect upon the great fertility of Hindostan, it is
amazing to consider the frequency of famine. It is evidently not
owing to any sterility of soil or climate; the evil must be traced
to some political cause, and it requires but little penetration to
discover it in the avarice and extortion of the various govern-
ments. The great spur to industry, that of security, is taken
away. Hence no man raises more grain than is barely sufficient
for himself, and the first unfavorable season produces a famine.
“The Mogul government at no period offered full security to
the prince, still less to his vassals; and to peasants the most
scanty protection of all. It was a continued tissue of violence
and insurrection, treachery and punishment, under which neither
commerce nor the arts could prosper, nor agriculture assume the
appearance of a system. Its downfall gave rise to a state still
more afflictive, since anarchy is worse than misrule. The Mo-
hammedan government, uTetched as it was, the European na-
tions have not the merit of overturning. It fell beneath the
weight of its own corruption, and had already been succeeded
by the multifarious tyranny of petty chiefs, whose rignt to
govern consisted in their treason to the state, and whose exac-
tions on the peasants were as boundless as their avarice. The
rents to government were, and, where natives rule, still are,
levied twice a j^ear by a merciless banditti, under the semblance
of an army, who wantonly destroy or carry off whatever part
of the produce may satisfy their caprice or satiate their avidity,
after having hunted the ill-fated peasants from the villages to
the woods. Any attempt of the peasants to defend their per'
sons or property within the mud walls of their villages onlj'
♦Histoiy of Civilization. Vol. I, Chap. 2. In this chapter
Buckle has collected a great deal of evidence of the oppression
and degradation of the people of India from the most remote
times, a condition which, blinded by the Malthusian doctrme
he has accepted and made the cornerstone of his theory of the
development of civilization, he attributes to the ease with which
food can there be produced.
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Book II.
dl6
calls for the more sifinal vengeance on those useful, but ill-
faied mortals. They are then surrounded and attacked with
musketry and field piece.s till resistance ceases, when the sur-
vivors are sold, and their habitations burned and leveled with
the ground. Hence you will frequently meet with the ryots
gathering^ up the scattered remnants of what had yesterday
been their habitation, if fear has permitted them to return;
but oftener the ruins are seen smoking, after a second visitation
of this kind, without the appearance of a human being to inter-
rupt the awful silence of destruction. This description does not
apply to the Mohammedan chieftains alone; it is equally appli-
cable to the Rajahs in the districts governed by Hindoos."*
To this merciless rapacity, which would have pro-
duced want and famine were the population but one to
a square mile and the land a Garden of Eden, suc-
ceeded, in the first era of British rule in India, as merci-
less a rapacity, backed by a far more irresistible ,
power. Says Macaulay, in his essay on Lord Clive:
“Enormous fortunes were rapidly accumulated at Calcutta,
svhile millions of human beings were reduced to the extremity
of wretchedness. They had been accustomed to live under
tyranny, but never under t3’’ranny like this. They found the
little finger of the Company thicker than the loins of Surajah
Dowlah. * * * It resembled the government of evil genii,
rather than the government of human tyrants. Sometimes they
submitted in patient misery. Sometimes they fied from the white
man as their fathers had been used to fly from the Maharatta,
and the palanquin of the English traveler was often
■carried through silent villages and towns that the report of his
approach had made desolate.”
Upon horrors that Macaulay thus but touches, the
vivid eloquence of Burke throws a stronger light — ^whole
districts surrendered to the unrestrained cupidity of the
worst of human kind, poverty-stricken peasants fiend-
ishly tortured to compel them to give up their little
hoards,' and once populous tracts turned into deserts,
* Indian Recreations. By Rev. Wm. Tennant. London, 1804,
Vol. L Sec. XXXIX. ' ■ ,
Chav.n. INPERENCES PROM FACTS 117
But the lawless license of early English rule has been
long restrained. To all that vast population the strong
hand of England has given a more than Roman peace;
the just principles of English law have been extended by
an elaborate system of codes and law officers designed to
secure to the humblest of these abject peoples the rights
of Anglo-Saxon freemen; the whole peninsula has been
intersected by railways, and great irrigation works hav^
been constructed. Yet, with increasing frequency
famine has succeeded famine, raging with greater in-
tensity over wider areas.
Is not this a demonstration of the Malthusian theory?
Does it not show that no matter how much the possibili-
ties of subsistence are increased, population still con-
tinues to press upon it? Does it not show, as Malthus
contended, that, to shut up the sluices by which super-
abundant population is carried off, is but to compel
nature to open new ones, and that unless the sources of
human increase are checked by prudential regulation^
the alternative of war is famine? This has been the
orthodox explanation. But the truth, as may be seen in
the facts brought forth in recent discussions of Indian
affairs in the English periodicals, is that these famines,
which have been, and are now, sweeping away their mil-
lions, are no more due to the pressure of population
upon the natural limits of subsistence than was the deso-
lation of 'the Carnatic when Hyder Ali’s horsemen burst
- upon it' in a whirlwind of destruction.
'The millions of India have bowed their necks beneath'
the yokes of many conquerors, but worst of all is the
steady, grinding weight of English domination — a weight
which is literally crushing millions out of existence, and,
as shown by English writers, is inevitably tending to a
most frightful and widespread' catastrophe. Other con-
querors have lived in the land, and, though bad and
tyrannous in their rule, have understood and been un-
118
POPTTLATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Booh II.
derstood by the people; but India now is like a great
estate owned by an absentee and alien landlord. A
most expensive military and civil establishment is kept
up, managed and officered by Englishmen who regard
India as but a place of temporary exile; and an enor-
mous sum, estimated as at least £20,000,000 annually,
raised from a population where laborers are in many
places glad in good times to work for l^d. to 4d. a day,
is drained away to England in the shape of remittances,
pensions, home charges of the government, etc. — a trib-
ute for which there is no return. The immense sums
lavished on railroads have, as shown by the returns,
been economically unproductive; the great irrigation
works are for the most part costly failures. In large
parts of India the English, in their desire to create a
class ^of landed proprietors, turned over the soil in abso-
lute possession to hereditary tax-gatherers, who rack-
rent the cultivators most mercilessly. In other parts,
where the rent is still taken by the State in the shape
of a- land tax, assessments are so high, and taxes are
collected so relentlessly, as to drive the ryots, who get
but the most scanty living in good seasons, into the
claws of money lenders, who are, if possible, even more
rapacious than the zemindars. Upon salt, an article of
prime necessity everywhere, and of especial necessity
where food is almost exclusively vegetable, a tax of
nearly twelve hundred per cent, is imposed, so that its
various industrial uses are prohibited, and large bodies
of the people cannot get enough to keep either them-
selves or their cattle in health. Below the English offi-
cials are a horde of native employees who oppress and
extort. The effect of English law, with its rigid rules,
and, to the native, mysterious proceedings, has been
but to put a potent instrument of plunder into the hands
of the native money lenders, from whom the peasants
are compelled to borrow on the most extravagant terms
Chap. II.
INFERENCES PROM FACTS
119
to meet their taxes, and to whom they are easily induced
to give obligations of which they know not the meaning,
“We do not care for the people of India,’’ writes Flor-
ence Nightingale, with what seems like a sob. “The
saddest sight to be seen in the East — ^nay, probably in
the world — is the peasant of our Eastern Empire.” And
she goes on to show the causes of the terrible famines,
in taxation which takes from the cultivators the very
means of cultivation, and the actual slavery to which
the ryots are reduced as “the consequences of our own
laws;” producing in “the most fertile country in the
world, a grinding, chronic semi-starvation in many places
where what is called famine does not exist.” * “The
• famines which have been devastating India,” says H. M',
Hyndman,t “are in the main financial famines. Men
and women cannot get food, because they cannot save
the money to buy it. Yet we are driven, so we say, to
tax these people more.” And he shows how, even from
famine stricken districts, food is exported in payment
of taxes, and how the whole of India is subjected to a
steady and exhausting drain, which, combined with the
enormous expenses of government, is making the popu-
lation year by year poorer. The exports of India con-
* Miss Nightingale (The People of India, in “Nineteenth
Century” for August, 1878) gives instances, which she says
represent millions of cases, of the state of peonage to which the
cultivators of Southern India have been reduced through the
facilities afforded by the Civil Courts to the frauds and oppres-
sions of money lenders and 'minor native officials. “Our Civil
Courts are regarded as institutions for enabling the rich to grind
the faces of the poor, and many are fain to seek a refuge from
their jurisdiction within native territory,”' says Sir David Wed-
derbum, in an article on Protected Princes in India, in a pre-
vious (July) number of the same magazine, in which he also
gives a native State, where taxation is comparatively light, as
■' an instance of the most prosperous population of India.
t See articles in “Nineteenth Century” for October, 1878, and
March, 1879.
120
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Book n.
sist almost exclusivelj* of agricultural products. For at
least one-third of- these, as Mr. Hyndman shows, no re-
turn whatever is received; they represent tribute — re-
mittances made by Englishmen in India, or expenses
of the English branch of the Indian government. ''■ And
for the rest, the return is for the most part government
stores, or articles of comfort and luxury used by the
English masters of India. He shows that the expenses
of government have been enormously increased under
Imperial rule; that the relentless taxation of a popula-
tion so miserably poor that the masses are not more
than half fed, is robbing them of their scanty means for
cultivating the soil; that the number of bullocks (the
Indian draft animal) is decreasing, and the scanty im-
plements of culture being given up to money lenders,
from whom ‘'we, a business people, are forcing the culti-
vators to borrow at 12, 24, 60 per cent.t to build and
pay the interest on the cost of vast public works, which
have never paid nearly five per cent." Says Mr. Hynd-
man: "The truth is that Indian society as a whole has
been frightfully impoverished under our rule, and that
the process is now going on at an exceedingly rapid
rate" — a statement which cannot be doubted, in yiew
of the facts presented- not only by such -writers as I have
referred to; but by Indian officials themselves. The very
efforts made by the .government to alleviate famines
do, by the increased taxation imposed, but- intensify and
extend their real cause. Although in the recent famine
* Prof. Pa-wcett, in a recent article on the Proposed Loans to
India, calls attentions to such items as £1,200 for - outfit and' -
passage of a member of the Governor General's Council; £2,450
-for outfit and passage of Bishops of Calcutta and Bombay.
f Florence -Nightingale says 100 per cent, is common, and even
then the cultivator is robbed in ways which she illustrates. It
is hardly necessary to say that these rates, like those of the
pa-wnbroker, are not interest in the economic sense of the term.
Chap. II-
INFERENCES FROM FACTS
121
in Southern India six millions of people,- it is estimated,
perished of actual starvation, and the great mass of
those who survived were actually stripped,. yet the taxes
were not remitted and the salt tax, already prohibitory
to the great bulk of these poverty stricken people, was
increased forty per cent.. Just as after the terrible Ben-
gal famine in 1770 the revenue was actually driven up,
by raising assessments upon the survivors and rigor-
ously enforcing collection.
In India now, as in India in past times, it is only the
most superficial view that can attribute want and, star-
vation to pressure of population upon the ability of the
land to produce subsistence. Could the cultivators re-
tain their little capital — could they be released from the
drain which, even in non-famine years, reduces great
masses of them to a. scale of living not merely below
what is deemed necessary for the sepoys, but what Eng-
lish humanity gives to the prisoners in the jails — ^reviv-
ing industry, assuming rnore productive forms, would
undoubtedly suffice to keep a much greater' population.
There are still in India great areas uncultivated, vast
mineral resources untouched, and it is certain that the
population of India does not reach, as within historical
times it never has reached, the real limit of the soil to
furnish subsistence, or even the point where this power
begins to decline with the increasing drafts made upon
it. The real cause of want in India has been, and yet
is, the rapacity of man, not the niggardliness of nature.
What is true of India is true of China. Densely
populated as China is in many parts, that the extreme
poverty of the lower classes is to be attributed to causes
sirhilar to those which have operated in India, and not
to too great population, is shown by many facts. In-
security prevails, production goes on under the greatest
disadvantages, and exchange is closely fettered. Where
the government is a succession of squeezings, and secu-
122
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Book II
rity for capital of any sort must be purchased of a man'
darin; where men's shoulders are the great reliance for
inland transportation; where the junk is obliged to be
constructed so as to unfit it for a sea-boat; where piracy
is a regular trade, and robbers often march in regi-
ments, poverty would prevail and the failure of a crop
result in famine, no matter how sparse the jDopulation.*
That China is capable of supporting a much greater
population is shown not only by the great extent of un-
cultivated land to which all travelers testify, but by the
immense unworkcd mineral deposits which are there
known to exist. China, for instance, is said to contain
the largest and finest deposit of coal yet anywhere dis-
covered. How much the working of these coal beds
would add to the ability do support a greater popula-
tion, may readily be imagined. Coal is not food, it is
true; but its production is equivalent to the production
of food. For, not only may coal be exchanged for food,
as is done in all mining districts, but the force evolved
by its consumption may be used in the production of
food, or may set labor free for the production of food.
Neither in India nor China, therefore, can poverty
and starvation be charged to the pressure of population
against subsistence. It is not dense population, but the
causes which prevent’ social organization from taking
its natural development and labor from securing its full
return, that keep millions just on the verge of starva-
tion, and every now and again .force millions beyond it.
That the Hindoo laborer thinks himself fortunate to get
a handful of rice, that the Chinese eat rats and puppies,
is no more due to the pressm’e of population than it is
due to the pressure of population that the Digger In-
dians live on grasshoppers, or the aboriginal inhabitants
of Australia eat the worms found in rotten wood.
* The seat of recent famine in China was not the most thickly
settled districts.
Chap. JI.
INFERENCES FROM FACTS
123
Let me be understood. I do not mean merely to say
' that India or China could, with a more highly developed
civilization, maintain a greater population, for to this
any Malthusian would agree. The Malthusian doctrine
does not ’deny that an advance in the productive arts
would permit a greater population to find subsistence.
, But the Malthusian theory affirms — and this is its eS"
sence — ^that, whatever be the capacity for production;
the natural tendency of population is to come up with
it, and, in the endeavor to press beyond it, to produce, ^
to use the phrase of Malthus, that degree of vice and
misery which is necessary to prevent further increase;
so that as productive power is increased, population' will
correspondingly increase, and in a little time produce
the same results as before. What I say is this : that no-
where is there any instance which will support this the-
ory; that nowhere can want be properly attributed tO'
the pressure of population against the power to procure-
subsistence in the then existing degree of human knowl-
edge; that everywhere the vice and misery attributed tcp
over-population can be traced to the warfare, tyranny^
and oppression which prevent knowledge from being
utilized and denjr the security essential to production.
The reason, why the natural increase of population does
not produce want, we shall come to hereafter. The fac
that it has not yet anywhere done so, is what we are
now concerned with. This fact is obvious with regard
to India and China. It will be obvious, too, wherever
we trace to their causes the results which on superficial
view are often taken to proceed from over-population.
Ireland, of all European countries, furnishes the great
stock example of over-population. The extreme pov-
erty of the peasantry and the low rate of wages there
prevailing, the Irish famine, and Irish emigration, are
constantly referred to as a demonstration of the Mal-
thusian theory worked out under the eyes of the civil-
124
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Booh II,
world, I doubt if a more striking instance can be
cited of the power of a preaccepted theory to blind men
as to the true relations of facts. The truth is, and it
lies on the surface, that Ireland has never yet had a
population which the natural powers of the country, in
the existing state of the productive arts, could not have
maintained in ample comfort. At the ■period of her
greatest population (1840-45) Ireland contained some-
thing over eight millions of people. But a very large -
proportion of them managed merely to exist — lodging in
miserable cabins, clothed with miserable rags, and with '
but potatoes for their staple food. When the potato
blight came, they died by thousands. But was it the -
inability of the soil to -support so large a population .
that compelled so many to live in this miserable way,
and exposed them to starvation on the failure of a
single root crop? On the contrarj’-, it was the same re-
morseless rapacity tliat robbed the Indian ryot of the
fruits of his toil and left him to starve where nature
offered plenty, A merciless banditti* of tax-gatherers
did not march through the .land plundering and tortur-
mg, but the laborer was just as effectual]}’- stripped by^
as merciless a horde of landlords, among whom the soil
had been divided as their absolute possession, regardless.
of any rights of those who lived upon it.
Consider the conditions of production under which
this eight million managed to live until the potato,
blight came. It was a condition to which the words
used by Mr, Tennant in reference to India may as ap-
propriately be applied— “the great spur to industry, that
of security, was taken away.'' Cultivation was for the
most part carried on by tenants at will, who,- even if the
rack-rents which they were forced to pay had per-
mitted them', did not dare to make improvements which
would have been but .the signal for an increase of rent.
Labor was thus applied in the most ineflBcient and
3iAp. II. INFERENCES FROM FACTS 125
wasteful manner, and labor was dissipated in aimless
idleness that, with any security for its fruits, would
have been applied unremittingly. But even under these
conditions, it is a matter of fact that Ireland did more
than support eight millions. For when her population
was at its highest, Ireland was a food exjiorting coun-
try. Even during the famine, grain and meat and
butter and cheese were carted for exportation along
roads lined with the starving and past trenches into
which the dead were piled. For these exports of food,
or at least for a great part of them, there was no return.
So far as the people of Ireland were concerned, the food
thus exported might as well have been burned up or
thrown into the sea, or never produced. It went not as
an exchange, but as a tribute — to pay the rent of ab-
sentee landlords; a levy wrung from producers by those
who in no wise contributed to production.
,Kad this food been left to those who raised it; had
the cultivators of the soil been permitted to retain and
use the capital their labor produced ; had security stimu-
lated industry and permitted the adoption of economical
methods, there would have been enough to support in
bounteous comfort the largest population Ireland ever
had, and the potato blight might have come and gone
without stinting a single human being of a full meal.
' For it was not the imprudence “of Irish peasants,” as
English economists coldly say, which induced them to
make the potato the staple of their food. Irish emi-
grants, when they can get other things, do' not live upon
the potato, and certainly' in the United States the pru-
dence of the Irish character,- in endeavoring to lay by-
something for a rainy day, is remarkable. They lived
on the potato, because rack-rents stripped everything
else, from them. The truth is, that the poverty and
misery of Ireland have never been fairly attributable
to over-population.
126
population and subsistence
Book II.
McCulloch, writing in 1838, says, in Note IV to
“Wealth of Nations:”
''The wonderful density of population in Ireland is the im-
mediate cause of the abject po%’^erty and depressed condition
of the great bulk, of the people. It is not too much to say that
< there are at present more than double the persons in Ireland it
is, wth its existing means of production, able either fully to
employ or to maintain in a moderate state of comfort.”
As in 1841 the population of Ireland was given as
8,175,124, we may set it down in 1838 as about eight
millions. Thus, to change McCuIIoch^s negative into an
affirmative, Ireland would, according to the over-popu-
lation theory, have been able to employ'- fully and main-
tain in a moderate state of comfort something less than
four million persons. Now, in the early part of the
preceding century, when Dean Swift wrote his “Modest
Proposal,” the population of Ireland was about two
millions. As neither the means nor the arts of produc-
tion had perceptibly advanced in Ireland during the
interval, then — if the abject poverty and depressed con-
dition of the Irish people in 1838 were attributable to
over-population — ^there should, upon McCulloch’s own
admission, have been in Ireland in 1727 more than full
employment, and much more than a moderate state of
comfort, for the whole two millions. Yet, instead of
this being the case, the abject poverty and depressed
condition of the Irish people in 1727 were such, that,
with burning, blistering irony. Dean Swift proposed to
relieve surplus ' population by cultivating a taste for
roasted babies, and bringing yearly to the shambles, as
dainty food for the rich, 100,000 Irish infants!
It is difficult for one wffio has been looking over the.
literature of Irish misery, as while writing this chapter
I have been doing, to speak in decorous terms of the
complacent attribution of Irish want and _ suffering to
over-population which is to be found even in the worka
Chap. II.
INFERENCES FROM FACTS
127
of such high-minded men as Mill and Buckle. I know
of nothing better calculated to make the blood boil
than the cold accounts of the grasping, grinding tyranny
to which the Irish people have been subjected, and to
which, and not to any inability of the land to support
its population, Irish pauperism and Irish famine are
to be attributed; and were it not for the enervating ef-
fect which the history of the world proves to be every-
where the result of abject poverty, it would be difficult
to resist something like a feeling of contempt for a race
who, stung by such wrongs, have only occasionally mur-
dered a landlord!
Whether over-population ever did cause pauperism
and starvation, may be an open question; but the
pauperism and starvation of Ireland can no more be at-
tributed to this cause than can the slave trade be attrib-
uted to the over-population of Africa, or the destruction
of Jerusalem to the inability of subsistence to keep pace
with reproduction. Had Ireland been by nature a grove
of bananas and bread-fruit, had her coasts been lined
by the guano-deposits of the Chinchas, and the sun of
lower latitudes warmed into more abundant life her
moist soil, the social conditions that have prevailed
there would still have brought forth poverty and' star-
vation. How could there fail to be pauperism and
famine in a country where rack-rents wrested from the
cultivator of the soil all the produce of his labot except
just enough to maintain life in good seasons; where
tenure at will forbade improvements and removed in-
centive to any but the most wasteful and poverty-
stricken culture; where the tenant dared not accumulate
capital, even if he could get it, for fear the landlord
would demand it in the rent; where in fact he was an
abject slave, who, at the nod of a human being like him-
self, might at any time be driven from his miserable
mud cabin, a houseless, homeless, starving wanderer,
128
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Book 11,
forbidden even to pluck the spontaneous fruits of the
earth, or to trap a wild hare to satisfy his hunger? No
matter how sparse the population, no matter what the
natural resources, are not pauperism and starvation
necessary consequences in a land where the producers
of wealth are compelled to work under conditions which
deprive them of hope, of self-respect, of energy, of
thrift; where absentee landlords drain away without
return at least a fourth of the net produce of the soil, and
when, besides them, a starving industrj’’ must support
resident landlords, with their horses and hounds, agents,
jobbers, middlemen and bailiffs, an alien state church
to insult religious prejudices, and an army of policemen
and soldiers to overawe and hunt down any opposition
to the iniquitous system? Is it not impiety far worse
than atheism to charge upon natural laws misery so
caused?
What is true in these three cases will be found upon
examination true of all cases. So far as our knowledge
of facts goes, we may safely deny that the increase of
population has ever yet pressed upon. -subsistence in
such a way as to produce ^dce and misery; that increase
of numbers has ever yet decreased the relative produc-
tion of food. The famines of India, China, and Ireland
can no more be credited to over-population than the
famines of sparsely populated Brazil. The vice and
misery that come of want can no more be attributed to
the niggardliness of Nature than can the six millions
slain by the sword of Genghis Khan, Tamerlane’s p3wa-
mid of skulls, or the extermination of the ancient .
Britons or of the aboriginal inhabitants of the West
Indies. . . ,
CHAPTER III
INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY
If we turn from an examination of the facts brought
forward in illustration of the Malthusian theory to con-
sider the analogies by which it is supported, we shall
find the same inconclusiveness.
The strength of the reproductive force in the animal
and vegetable kingdoms — such facts as that a single
pair of salmon might, if preserv'-ed from their natural
enemies for a few years, fill the ocean; that a pair. of
rabbits would, under the same circumstances, soon over-
run a continent; that many plants scatter their seeds by
the hundred fold, and some insects deposit thousands
of eggs; and that everywhere through these kingdoms
each species constantly tends to press, and when not
limited by the number of its enemies, evidently does
press, against the limits of subsistence — is constantly
cited, from Malthus down to the text-books of the
present day, as showing that population likewise tends
to press against subsistence, and, when unrestrained by
other means, its natural increase must necessarily result
in such low wages and want; or, if that will not suffice,
and the increase still goes on; in such actual starvation,
as will keep it within the limits of subsistence.
But is this analogy valid? It is from .the vegetable
and animal kingdoms that man’s food is drawn, and
hence the greater strength of the reproductive force in
the vegetable and animal kingdoms than in man simply
proves the power of subsistence to increase faster than
129
130
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
BooTi II.
population. Does not the fact that all- of the things
which furnish man’s subsistence have the power to mul-
tiply many fold — some of them many thousand fold,
and some of them many million or even billion fold-
while he is only doubling his numbers, show that, let
human beings increase to the full extent of their re-
productive power, the increase of population can never
exceed subsistence? This is clear when it is remem-
bered that though in the vegetable and animal king-
doms each species, by virtue of its reproductive power,
naturally and necessarily presses against the conditions
which limit its further increase, yet these conditions
are nowhere fixed and final. No species reaches the
ultimate limit of soil, water, air, and sunshine; but the
actual limit of each is in the existence of other species,
its rivals, its enemies, or its food. Thus the conditions
which limit the existence of such of these species as
afford him subsistence man can extend (in some cases
his mere appearance will extend them), and thus the
reproductive forces of the species which supply his
wants, instead of wasting themselves against their for-
mer limit, start forward in his service at a pace which
his powers of increase cannot rival. If he but shoot
hawks, food-birds will increase; if he but trap foxes
the wild rabbits will multiply; the honey bee moves
with the pioneer, and on the organic matter with which
man’s presence fills the rivers, fishes feed.
Even if any consideration of final causes be excluded;
even if it be not permitted to suggest that the high and
constant reproductive force in vegetables and animals
has been ordered to enable them to subserve the uses
of man, and that therefore the pressure of the lower
forms of life against subsistence does not tend to show
that it must likewise be so with man, ’’the roof and
crown of things;” yet there still remains a distinction
between man and all other forms of life that destroys
Chap.JII. inferences FBOM ANALOGY 131
the analogy. ’ Of all living things, man is the only one
-who can give play, to the reproductive forces, more
powerful than his own, which supply him with food.
Beast, insect, bird, and fish take only what they find.
Their increase is at the expense of their food, and when
they have reached the existing limits of food, their food
must increase before they can increase. But unlike that
of any other living thing, the increase of man involves
the increase of his food. If bears instead of men had
been shipped from Europe to the North American con-
tinent, there would now be no more bears than in the
time of Columbus, and possibly fewer, for bear food
would not have been increased nor the conditions of
bear life extended, by the bear immigration, but prob-
ably the reverse. But within thn limits of the United
States alone, there are now forty-five millions of men
where then there were only a few hundred thousand,
and yet there is now within that territory much more
food per capita for the forty-five millions than there
was then for the few hundred thousand. It is not the
increase of food that has caused this increase of men;
but the increase of men that has brought about the in-
crease of food. There is more food, simply because
there are more men.
^ Here is a difference between the animal and the man.
Both the jay-hawk and the man eat chickens, but the
more jay-hawks the fewer chickens, while the more men
the more chickens. Both the seal and the man eat
salmon, but when a seal takes a salmon there is a
salmon the less, and were seals to increase past a certain
point salmon must diminish; while by^ placing the
spawn of the salmon under favorable conditions man
can so increase the number of salmon as more, than to
make up for all he may take, and thus, no matter how
much men may increase, their increase need never out-
run the supply of salmon. '
1S4 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE BooklJ.
nothing away wlien we depart. The human being,
pJiysically considered, is but a transient form of mat-
ter, a changing mode of motion. The matter remains
and the force persists. Nothing is lessened, nothing is
weakened. And from tliis it foJ]ow.s that the limit to
the population of the globe can be only the limit of
space.
Now this limitation of space— this danger that the
human race may increase beyond the possibility of find-
ing elbow room — is so far off as to have for us no more
practical interest than the recurrence of fhe glacial
period or the final extinguishment of the sun. Yet re-
mote and shadowy as it is, it is this possibility which
gives to the Malthusian theory its apparently self-evi-
dent character. But if we follow it, even this shadow
will disappear. It, also, springs from a false analogy.
That vegetable and animal life tend to press against the
limits of space does not prove the same tendency in
human life.
Granted that man is only a more highly developed
animal; that the ring-tailed monkey is a distant relative
who has gradually developed acrobatic tendencies, and
the hump-backed whale a far-off connection who in
early life took to the sea — granted that back of these
he is kin to the vegetable, and is still subject to the
same laws as plants, fishes, birds, and beasts. Yet there
is still this difference between man and all other animals
—he is the only animal whose desires increase as they
are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied. The
wants of every other living thing are uniform and fixed. .
The ox of to-day aspires to no more than did the ox
when man first yoked him. The sea gull of the English
Channel, who poises himself above the swift steamer,
wants no better food or lodging than the gulls who
circled round as the keels of Caesar’s galleys first grated
on a British beach. Of all that nature offers them, be
Chap. III.
INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY.
135
it ever so abundant, all living things save man can take,
and care for, only enough to supply wants which are
definite and fixed. The only use they can make of addi-
tional supplies or additional opportunities is to muk
tiply.
But not so with man. No sooner are his animal wants
satisfied than new wants mise. Food he wants first,
as does the beast; shelter next, as does the beast; and
these given, his reproductive instincts assert their sway,
as do those of the beast. But here man and beast
part company. The beast never goes further; the man
has but set his feet on the first step of an infinite pro-
gression— a progression upon which the beast never
enters; a progression away from and above the beast.
The demand for quantity once satisfied, he seeks
quality. The very desires that he has in common with
the beast become expended, refined, exalted. It is not
merely hunger, but taste, that seeks gratification in
food; in clothes, he seeks not merely comfort, but
adornment; the rude shelter becomes a house; the un-
discriminating sexual attraction begins to transmute
itself into subtile influences, and the hard and common
stock of animal life to blossom and to bloom into shapes
of delicate beauty. As power to gratify his wants in-
creases, so does aspiration grow. Held down to lower
levels of desire, Lucullus will sup with Lucullus; twelve
boars turn on spits that Antony’s mouthful of meat may ’
be done to a turn; every kingdom of Nature be ran-
sacked to add to Cleopatra’s charms, and marble colon-
nades and hanging gardens and pyramids that rival the
hills arise. Passing into higher forms of desire, that
which slumbered in the plant and fitfully stirred in the
beast, awakes in the man. The eyes of the mind are
opened, and he longs to know. He braves the scorch-
ing heat of the desert and the icy blasts of the polar
sea, but not for food; he watches all night, but it is to /
132 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE BookH.
In short, while all through the vegetable and animal
kingdoms the limit of subsistence is independent of the
diing subsisted, with man the. limit of subsistence is,
vithin the final limits of earth, air, water, and sunshine,
iependent upon man himself. And this being the case,
,he analog}’^ which it is sought to draw between the
ower forms of life and man manifest^ fails. While
mgetables and animals do press against the limits of
lubsistence, man cannot press against the limits of his
nbsistence until the limits of the globe are reached.
)bserve, this is not merely true of the whole, but of
11 the parts. As we cannot reduce the level of the
mallest bay or harbor without reducing the level not
aerely of the ocean with which it communicates, but
if all the seas and oceans of the world, so the limit of
ubsistence in any particular place is not the ph 'sica’
imit of that place, but the phj'sical limit of the globe,
hfty square miles of soil will in. the present state of the
roductive arts yield subsistence for only s^me thou-
ands of people, but on the fifty .square n ’les which
omprise the city of London some three and a half
lillions of people are maintained, and subsistence in-
'eases as population increases. So far as the limit of
iibsistence is concerned, London may grow to a popu-
ition of a hundred millions, or five hundred millions, or
thousand millions, for she- draws for subsistence upon
le whole globe, and the limit which subsistence sets to
er growth in population is the limit of the globe to
irnish food for its inhabitants.
But here wilLarise another idea from which the Mal-
lusian theory derives great support — ^that of the di-
linishing productiveness of land. As conclusively
roving the law of diminishing productiveness it is .said
, the current treatises that were it not true that be-
md a certain point land yields less and less to'addi-
onal applications of . labor and capital, increasing
Chap. III.
IXFEREXCES FROM ANALOGY
133
population would not cause any extension of cultiva-
tion, but that all the increased supplies needed could
and would be raised without taking into cultivation any
fresh ground. Assent to this seems to involve assent to
the^ doctrine that the difficulty of obtaining subsistence
must increase with increasing population.
But I think the necessity is only in seeming. If the
proposition be analyzed it will be seen to belong to a
class that depend for validity upon an implied or sug-
gested qualification— a truth relatively, which taken ab-
solutely becomes a non-truth. For that man cannot
exhaust or lessen the powers of nature follows from the
indestructibility of matter and the persistence of force.
Production and consumption are only relative terms.
Speaking absolutely, man neither produces nor con-
sumes. The whole human race, were they to labor to
infinity," could not make this rolling sphere one atom
hea^der or one atom lighter, could not add to or dimin-
ish by one iota the sum of the forces whose everlasting
circling produces all motion and sustains all life. As
the water that we take from the ocean must again re-
turn to the ocean, so the food we take from the reser-
voirs of natm-e is, from the moment we take- it, on its
way back to those reservoirs. What we draw from a
limited extent of land may temporarily reduce the pro-
ductiveness of that land, because the return may be
to other land, or may be divided between that land and
other land, or, perhaps, all land ; but this possibility
lessens with increasing area, and ceases when the whole
globe is considered. That the earth could maintain a
thousand billions of people as easily as a thousand mil-
lions is a necessary deduction from the manifest truths
" that, at least so far as our agency, is concerned, rdatter
• is eternal and force must forever continue to act. Life
does' not use up the forces that maintain life. We come-
'into the material universe bringing’ nothing; we take
134
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Book II,
nothing away when we depart. The human being,
physically considered, is but a transient form of mat-
ter, a changing mode of motion. The matter remains
and the force persists. Nothing is lessened, nothing is
weakened. And from this it follows that the limit to
the population of the globe can be only the limit of
space.
Now this limitation of space — this danger that the
human race may increase beyond the possibility of find-
ing elbow room — ^is so far off as to have for us no more
practical interest than the recurrence of the glacial
period or the final extinguishment of the sun. Yet re-
mote and shadowy as it is, it is this possibility which
gives to the Malthusian theory its apparently self-evi-
dent character. But if we follow it, even this shadow '
will disappear. It, also, .springs from a false analogy.
That vegetable and animal life tend to press against the
limits of space does not prove the same tendency in
human life.
Granted that man is only a more highly developed
animal; that the ring-tailed monkey is a distant relative
who has gradually developed acrobatic tendencies, and
the hump-backed whale a far-off connection who in
early life took to the sea — granted that back of these
he is kin to the vegetable, and is still subject to the
same laws as plants, fishes, birds, and beasts. Yet there
is still this difference between man and all other animals
— he is the only animal whose desires increase as they
are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied. The
wants of every other living thing are uniform and fixed.
The ox of to-day aspires to no more than did the ox
when man first yoked him. The sea gull of the English
Channel, who poises himself above the swift steamer,
wants no better food or lodging than the gulls who
circled round as the keels of Caesar’s galleys first grated
on a British beach. Of all that nature offers them, be
Chav. III. . , INFERENCES PROM ANALOGY, 135
it ever so abundant, all living things save man can take,
and care for, only enough to supply wants which are
definite and fixed. The only use they can make of addi-
tional supplies or additional opportunities is to mul-
tiply.
But not so with man. No sooner are Lis animal wants
satisfied than new wants arise. Food he wants first,
as does the beast; shelter next, as does the beast; and
these given, his reproductive instincts assert their sway,
as do those of the beast. But here man and beast
part company. The beast never goes further; the man
has but set his feet on the first step of an infiiiite pro-
gression— a progression upon which the beast never
enters; a progression away from and above the beast.
The demand for quantity once satisfied, he seeks
quality. The very desires that he has in common with
the beast become extended, refined, exalted. It is not
merely hunger, but taste, that seeks gratification in
food; in clothes, he seeks not merely comfort, but
adornment; the rude shelter becomes a house; the un-
discriminating sexual attraction begins to transmute
itself into 'subtile influences, and the hard and common
> stock of animal life to blossom and to bloom into shapes
of delicate beauty. As power to gratify his wants in-
creases, so does aspiration grow. Held down to lower
levels of desire, Lucullus will sup with Lucullus; twelve
boars turn on spits that Antony’s mouthful of meat may ’
be done to a turn; every kingdom of Nature be ran-
sacked to add to Cleopatra’s charms, and marble colon-
nades and hanging gardens and pyramids that rival the
hills arise. Passing into higher forms of desire, that
which slumbered in the plant and fitfully stirred in the
beast, awakes in the man. The eyes of the mind are
opened, and he longs to know. He braves the scorch-
ing heat of the desert and the icy blasts of the polar
sea, but not for food; he watches all night, but it is to
138
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Booh IJ.
ference is really ^va^•anted by facts and suggested by
analop^ it is that the law of population includes such
beautiful adaptations as investigation has already
shown in other natural laws, and that we are no more
warranted in assuming that the instinct of reproduc-
tion, in the natural development of society, tends to
produce misery and vice, than we should be in assuming
that the force of gravitation must hurl the moon to the
earth and the earth to the sun, or than in assuming from
the contraction of water with reductions of tempera-
ture down to thirty-two degrees that rivers and lakes
must freeze to the bottom with every frost, and the
temperate regions of earth be thus rendered uninhabit-
able b}”- even moderate winters. That, besides the posi-
tive and prudential checks of Malthus, there is a third
check which comes into play with the elevation of the
standard of comfort and the development of the intel-
lect, is pointed to by many well-known facts. The
proportion of births is notoriously greater in new settle-
ments, where the struggle with nature leaves little
opportunity for intellectual life, and among the poverty-
bound classes of older countries, who in the midst of '
wealth are deprived of all its advantages and reduced
to all but an animal existence, than it is among the
classes to whom the increase of wealth has brought
independence, leisure, comfort, and a fuller and more
varied life. This fact, long ago recognized in the
homely adage, “a rich man for luck, and a poor man
for children,” was noted by Adam Smith, who says it
is not uncommon to find a poor half-starved Highland -
woman has been the mother of twenty-three or twenty-
four children, and is everywhere so clearly perceptible
that it is only necessary to allude to it.
If the real law of population is thus indicated, as I
think it must be, then the tendency to increase, instead
of being always uniform, is strong where a greater popu-
Chap. III. INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY 139
lation would give increased comfort, and where the
perpetuity of the race is threatened by the mortality
induced by adverse conditions; but weakens just as the
higher development of the individual becomes possible
and the perpetuity of the race is assured.’ In other
Words, the law of population accords with and is sub-
ordinate to the law of intellectual development, and any
danger that human beings may be brought into a world
where they cannot be provided for arises not from the
ordinances of nature, but from social mal- adjustments
that in the midst of wealth condemn men to want. The
^ truth of this will, I think, be conclusively demonstrated
when, after having cleared the ground, we trace out the
true laws of social growth. But it would disturb the
iiatural order of the argument to anticipate them now.
If I have succeeded in maintaining a negative in show-
ing that the Malthusian theory is not proved by the
reasoning by which it is supported— it is enough for
the present. In the next chapter I propose to take the
affirmative and show that it is disproved by facta.
136 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE Bool 11
trace the circling of the eternal stars. He adds toil to
toil, to gratify a hunger no animal has felt; to assuage
a thirst no beast can know.
Out upon nature, in upon himself, back through the
mists tliat shroud the past, forward into the darkness
that overhangs the futurcj turns the restless desire that
arises when the animal wmnts slumber in Satisfaction.
Beneath things, he seeks the law; he would know" how
the globe W"as forged and tlie stars w'ere hung, and
trace to their origins the springs of life. And, then, as
the man develops his nobler nature, there arises the
desire higher yet — ^the passion of passions, the hope of
hopes — the desire that he, even he, may somehow" aid
in making life better and brighter, in destroying w"ant
and sin, sorrow and shame. He masters and curbs the
animal; he turns his back upon the feast and renounces
the place of power; he leaves it to others to accumulate
w"ealth, to gratify pleasant tastes, to bask themselves
in the warm sunshine of the brief day. He works for
those he never saw and never can see; for a fame, or
maybe but for a scant justice, that can only come long
after the clods have rattled upon his coffin lid. He toil"
in the advance, where it is cold, and there is little cbee:
from men, and the stones are sharp and the bramble;
thick. Amid the scoffs of the present and the sneerj
.that stab like knives, he builds for the future; he cuts
the trail, that progressive humanity may hereafter
broaden into a highroad. Into higher, grander spheres
desire mounts and beckons, and a star that rises in the
east leads him on. Lo! the pulses of the man- throb' v/ith
the yearnings of the god — ^he would aid in the process
of the suns!
Is riot the gulf too wide for, the analog to span/
Give more food, open fuller conditions of life, and the
vegetable or animal can but multiply; the man will de-
velop. In the one the expansive force can but extend
Chap. III. INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY 137
I
existence in new numbers; in. the other, it will inevi-
tably tend to extend existence in higher forms and wider
powers. Man is an animal; but he is an animal plus
something else. He is the mythic earth-tree, whose
roots are in the ground, but whose topmost branches
may blossom in the heavens!
Whichever way it be turned, the reasoning by which
this theory of the constant tendency of population to
press against the limits of subsistence is supported shows
an unwarranted assumption, an undistributed middle;
as the logicians would say. Facts do not warrant it,
analogy does not countenance it. It is a pure chimera
of the imagination, such as those that for a long time
prevented men from recognizing the rotundity and mo-
tion of the earth. It is just such a theory as that under-
neath us everything not fastened to the earth must fall
off; as that a ball dropped from the mast of a ship in
motion must fall behind the mast; as that a live fish
placed in a vessel full of water will displace no water.
It is as unfounded, if not as grotesque, as an assump'
tion we can imagine Adam might have made hhd he
been of an arithmetical turn of mind and figured on
the growth of his first baby .from' the rate of its early
months. From the fact that at birth it weighed ten
pounds and in eight months thereafter twenty pounds,
he might, with the arithmetical knowledge which some
sages have supposed him to possess, have ciphered out
a result quite as striking as that of Mr. Malthus;
namely, that by the time it got to be ten years old it
would be as hea^^ as an ox, at twelve as heavy as an
elephant, and at thirty would weigh no less than
175,716,339,548 tons.
The fact is, there is no more reason for us to trouble
ourselves about the pressure of population upon sub-
sistence than there was for Adam to worry himself
about, the rapid growth of his baby. So far as an in-
138
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Bool: II.
fercnce is really warranted by facts and suggested by
analop’^, it is that the law of population includes such
beautiful adaptations as investigation has already
shown in other natural laws, and that we are no more
warranted in assuming that the instinct of reproduc-
tion, in the natural development of society, tends to
produce misery and vice, than we should be in assuming
that the force of gravitation must hurl the moon to the
earth and the earth to the sun, or than in assuming from
the contraction of water with reductions of tempera-
ture down to thirty-two degrees that rivers and lakes
must freeze to the bottom with every frost, and the
temperate regions of earth be thus rendered uninhabit-
able by even moderate winters. That, besides the posi-
tive and prudential checks of Malthus, there is a third
check which comes into play with the elevation of the
standard of comfort and the development of the intel-
lect, is pointed to by many well-known facts. The
proportion of births is notoriously greater in new settle-
ments, where the struggle with nature leaves little
opportunity for intellectual life, and among the poverty-
bound classes of older countries, who in the midst of
wealth are deprived of all its advantages and reduced
to all but an animal existence, than it is among the
classes to whom the increase of wealth has brought
independence, leisure, comfort, and a fuller and more
varied life. This fact, long ago recognized in the
homely adage, “a rich man for luck, and a poor man
for children,” was noted by Adam Smith, who says it
is not uncommon to find a poor half-starved Highland
woman has been the mother of twenty-three or twenty-
four children, and is everywhere so clearly perceptible
that it is only necessary to allude to it.
If the real law of population is thus indicated, as I
think it must be, then the tendency to increase, instead
of being always uniform, is strong where a greater popu-
Chap. III.
INFERENCES PROM ANALOGY
139
lation would give increased comfort, and where the
perpetuity of the race is threatened by the mortality
induced by adverse conditions; but weakens just as the
higher development of the individual becomes possible
and the perpetuity of the race is assured. In other
words, the law of population accords with and is sub-
ordinate to the law of intellectual development, and any
danger that human beings may be brought into a world
where they cannot be provided for arises not from the
ordinances of nature, but from social mal-adjustments
that in the midst of wealth condemn men to want. The
truth of this will, I think, be conclusively demonstrated
when, after having cleared the ground, we trace out the
true laws of social growth. But it would disturb the
natural order of the argument to anticipate them now.
If I have succeeded in maintaining a negative — in show-
ing that the Malthusian theory is not proved by the
reasoning by which it is supported — it is enough for
the present. In the next chapter I propose to take the
affirmative and show that it is disproved by facts.
142
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Book //.
greater the comfort which an equitable distribution of
wealth wouFd give to each individual. I assert that in
a state of equality the natural increase of population
would constantly tend tn make ever}^ individual richer
instead of poorer.
I thus distinctly join issue, and submit the question
to the test of facts.
But observe (for even at the risk of repetition I wish
to warn the reader against a confusion of thought that
is observable even in VTiters of great reputation), that
the question of fact into which this issue resolves itseli
is not in what stage of population is most subsistence
produced? but in what stage of population is there ex-
hibited the greatest power of producing wealth? For
the power of producing wealth in any form is the power
of producing subsistence — and the consumption of
wealth in any form, or of wealth-producing power, is
equivalent to the consumption of subsistence. I have,
for instance, some money in my pocket. With it I may
buy either food or- cigars or jewelry or theater tickets,
and just as I expend my money do I determine labor to
the production of food, of cigars, of jewelry, or of
theatrical representations. A set of diamonds has a
value equal to so many barrels of flour — ^that is to
say, it takes on the average as much labor to produce
the diamonds as it would to produce so much flour. If
I load my wife with diamonds, it is as much an exertion
of subsistence-producing power as though I had devoted
so much food to pmposes of ostentation. If I keep a
footman, I take a possible plowman from the plow. The
breeding and maintenance of a race-horse require care
and labor which would suffice for the breeding and
maintenance of many work-horses. The destruction
of wealth involved in a general illumination or the firing
of a salute is equivalent to the bmning up of so much
food; the keeping of a regiment of soldiers, or of a war- ,
Chav. IV. DISPROOF OF THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY 143
ship and her crew, is tlie diversion to unproductive uses
of labor that could produce subsistence for many thou-
sands of people. Thus the power, of any population to
produce the necessaries of life is not to be measured by
the necessaries of life actually produced, but by the
expenditure of power in all modes.
There is no necessity for abstract reasoning. The
question is one of simple fact. Does the relative power
of producing wealth decrease with the increase of popu-
lation?
The facts are so patent that it is only necessary to
call attention to them. We have, in modern times, seen
many communities advance in population. Have they
not at the same time advanced even more rapidly in
wealth? We see many communities still increasing in
population. Are they not also increasing their wealth
still faster? Is there any doubt that while England has
been increasing her population at the rate of twH per
cent, per annum, her wealth has been growing in still
greater proportion? Is it not true that wdiile the popu-
lation of the United States has been doubling every
twenty-nine* years her wealth has been doubling at
much shorter intervals? Is it not true that under sim-
ilar conditions — ^that is to say, among communities of
similar people in a similar stage of civilization — ^the
most densely populated community is also the richest?
Are -not the- more densely populated Eastern States
richer in proportion to population than the more
sparsely populated Western or Southern States? Is not
England, where population is even denser than in the
Eastern States of the Union, also richer in proportion?
Where will you find wealth devoted with the most
■ lavishness to non-productive use — costly buildings, fine
furniture, luxurious equipages, statues, pictures, pleasure
* The rate up to 1860 was 35 per cent, each decade.
CHAPTER IV
disproof of the m^vlthusiah theory
rea®oSL?h“ thoroughly entwined with tk,
with man^noTr''^’ f° does it harmonist
in diCoTt fv, T it to «o«f
meet aS Aw'’"'’ ** oocessajy to
armrmtnt K insufficiency of the
to the test of toSt' the'*^'’”*^1’ bringing it
the^^hTsCo? S"‘ h"
?iS2 aat'frixss,-
c^tfeiSE ^
and cause wrut1"° tonds to reduce wages
to reduce the * ^ simply the question whether it tends
^ g?4n Imt^rr/abt"^^’*’' ■=“
This IS what the current doctrine holds. The ac-
natoe thr fess^raerously “ required from
p“^ fnd ?ef®®‘?““ “mrlouSetr
C Sl ^ages and deepen poverty, or, in the phrase
’^.Malthus, must result in vice and ‘misery To Quote
^h^nguage of John Stuart MiU: • ^ ^ ^
IJ-ctively 60 well provided for as a smaller,
140
Chap. IV. DISPROOF OF THE MALTHUSIAN -THEORY
141
The niggardliness of nature, not the injustice of society, is the
cause of .the penalty attached to over-population*. unjust
distribution of wealth does not aggravate the evil, but, at most,
causes it to be somewhat earlier felt. It is in vain to say that all
mouths which the increase of mankind calls into existence bring
with them hands. The new mouths require as much food as
the old ones, and the hands do not produce as much. If all in-
struments of production were held in joint property by the
whole people, and the produce divided with j)erfect equality
_among them, and if in a society thus constituted, industry were
as energetic and the produce as ample as at the present time,
there would be enough to make all the existing population
extremely comfortable; but when that population had doubled
itself, as, with existing habits of the people, under such an
encouragement, it undoubtedly would in little more than twenty
years, what would then be their condition? Unless the arts
of production were in the same time improved in an almost un-
exampled degree, the inferior soils which must be resorted to,
and the more laborious and scantily remunerative cultivation
ivhich must be employed on the superior soils, to procure food
^or. so much larger a population, would, by an. insuperable
necessity, render every individual in the community poorer than
nefore. If the population continued to increase at the same rate,
a time would soon amve when no one would have more than
mere necessaries, and, soon after, a time when no one would have
a sufficiency of those, and the further increase of population
ii’ould be arrested by death.” t
- All this I deny. I assert that the very reverse of
these propositions is true. I assert that in any given
state of civilization a greater number of people can col-
lectively be b,etter provided for than a smaller^ I assert
that the injustice of society, not the niggardliness of
nature, is the cause of the want and ihisery which the
current • theory attributes to over-population. I assert
that the new mouths which an increasing population
Calls into existence require no more food than the old
ones, while the hands thej’- bring with them can in the
natural order of things produce more. I assert that,
other things being- equal, the greater the population, the
* Principles .of Political Economy, Book I, Chap. XTEI, Sec. 2.
142
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Book II.
greater the comfort ■^iiich an equitable distribution of
wealth would give to each individual. I assert that in
a state of equality the natural increase of population
would constantly tend to make everj’’ individual richer
instead of poorer.
I thus distinctl}'' join i.ssue, and submit the question
to the test of facts.
But obsen'’e (for even at the risk of repetition I wish'
to warn the reader against a confusion of thought that
is observable even in writers of great reputation), that
the question of fact into which this issue resolves itself
is not in what stage of population is most subsistence
produced? but in what stage of population is there ex-
hibited the greatest power of producing wealth? For
the power of producing wealth in any form is the power
of producing subsistence — and the consumption of '
wealth in any form, or of wealth-producing power, is
equivalent to the consumption of subsistence. I have,
for instance, some monej’’ in my pocket. With it I may
buy either food or' cigars or jewelry or theater tickets, ~
and just as I expend my money do I determine labor to
the production of food, of cigars, of jewelry, or of
theatrical representations. A set of diamonds has a
value equal to so many barrels of flour — that is to
say, it takes on the average as much labor to produce
the diamonds as it would to produce so much flour. If
I load my v/ife v/ith diamonds, it is as much an exertion >
of subsistence-producing power as though I had devoted
so much food to purposes of ostentation. If I keep a
footman, I take a possible plowman from the plow. The
breeding and maintenance of a race-horse require care
and labor v^hich would suffice for the breeding and
maintenance of many work-horses. The destruction
of wealth involved in a general illumination or the firing
of a salute is equivalent to the burning up of so much
food; the keeping of a regiment of soldiers, or of a war-
Chap. IV. DISPROOF OF THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY 143
ship and her crew, is the diversion to unproductive uses
of labor that could produce subsistence for many thou-
sands of people. Thus the power, of any population to
produce the necessaries of life is not to be measured by
the necessaries of life actually produced, but by the
expenditure of power in all modes.
There is no necessity for abstract reasoning. The
question is one of simple fact. Does the relative power
of producing wealth decrease with the increase of popu-
lation?
The facts are so patent that it is only necessary to
call attention to them. We have, in modern times, seen
many communities advance in population. Have they
not at the same time advanced even more rapidly in
w'-ealth? We see many communities still increasing in
population. Are they not also increasing their wealth
still faster? Is there any doubt that while England has
been increasing her population at the rate of two per
cent, per annum, her wealth has been growing in still
greater proportion? Is it not true that while the popu-
lation of the United States has been doubling every
twenty-nine years her wealth has been doubling at
much shorter intervals? Is it not true that under sim-
ilar conditions — ^that is to say, among communities of
similar people in a similar stage of civilization — ^the
most densely populated community is also the richest?
Are mot the- more densely populated Eastern States
richer in proportion to population than the mure
sparsely populated Western or Southern States? Is not
England, where population' is even denser than in the
Eastern States of the Union, also richer in proportion?
Where will you find wealth devoted with the most
' lavishness to non-productive use — costly buildings, fine
furniture, luxurious equipages, statues, pictures, pleasure
* The rate up to 1860 was 35 per cent, each decade.
144 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE Booh II.
gardens and yachts? Is it not where population is
densest rather than wdiere it is sparsest? Where will
you find in largest proportion those whom the general
production suifices to keep without productive labor on
their part — men of income and of elegant leisure,
thieves, policemen, menial servants, lawyers, men of
letters, and the like? Is it not where population is
dense rather than where it is sparse? Whence is it that
capital overflows for remunerative investment? Is it
not from densely populated countries to sparsely popu-
lated countries? These things conclusively show that
wealth is greatest where population is densest; that the
production of wealth to a given amount of labor in-
creases as population increases. These things are ap-
parent wherever we turn our eyes. On the same level
of civilization, the same stage of the. productive arts,
government, etc,, the most populous countries are al-
ways the most wealthy.
Let us take a particular case, and that a case which
of all that can be cited seems at first blush best to sup-
port the theory we are considering — ^the case of a com-
munity where, while population has largely increased,
wages have greatly decreased, and it is not a matter of
dubious inference but of obvious fact that the gener-
osity of nature has lessened. That community is Cali-
fornia, When upon the discovery of gold the first wave
of immigration poured into California it found a country
in which nature was in the most generous mood. From
the river banks and bars the glittering deposits of thou-
sands of years could be taken by the most primitive
appliances, in amounts which made an ounce ($16) per
day only ordinary wages. The plains, covered with
nutritious grasses, were alive with countless herds of
horses and cattle, so plenty that, any traveler was at
liberty to shift his saddle to a fresh steed, or to kill
a bullock if he needed a steak, leaving the hide, its
Chap. IV. DISPROOF OF THE MADTHTJSIAN THEORY 145
only valuable part, for the owner. From the rich soil
which came first under cultivation, the mere plowing
and sowing brought crops that in older countries, if pro-
cured at all, can only be procured by the most thorough
manuring and cultivation. In early California, amid
this profusion of nature, wages and interest were higher
than anywhere else in the world.
This adrgin profusion of nature has been steadily giv-
ing way before the greater and greater demands which
an increasing population has made upon it. Poorer and
poorer diggings have been worked, until now no dig-
gings worth speaking of can be found, and gold mining
requires much capital, large skill, and elaborate machin- ^
erjq and involves gi-eat risks. “Horses cost money,’’
and cattle bred on the sage-brush plains of Nevada are
brought by railroad across the mountains and killed in
San Francisco shambles, while farmers are beginning to
save their straw and look for manure, and land is in cul-
tivation which will hardly yield a crop three years out
of four without irrigation. At the same time wages and
interest have steadily gone down. Many men are noW
glad to work for a week for less than they once de-
manded for the day, and money is loaned by the year
' for a rate which once would hardly have been though!,
extortionate by the month. Is the connection 'between
the reduced productiveness of nature and the reduced
rate of wages that of cause and effect? Is it true that
wages are lower because labor yields less wealth? On
the contraiy! Instead of the wealth-producing power
of labor being less in California in 1879 than in 1849,
- I am convinced that it is greater. And, it seems to me,
that no one who considers how' enormously during these
years the efficiency of labor in .California has- been, in-
creased by roads, wharves, flumes, railroads, steamboats,
telegraphs, and machinery of all kinds; by a closer con-
nection with the rest of the world; and by the number--
144 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE Book 11.
gardens and yachts? Is it not where population is
densest rather than where it is sparsest? Where ■rtII
you find in largest proportion those whom the general
production sufiices to keep without productive labor on
their part — ^men of income and of elegant leisure,
thieves, policemen, menial servants, lawyers, men of
letters, and the like? Is it not where population is
diense rather than where it is sparse? Whence is it that
capital overflows for remunerative investment? Is it
not from densely populated countries to sparsely popu-
lated countries? These things conclusively show that
wealth is greatest where population is densest; that the
production of wealth to a given amount of labor in-
creases as population increases: These things are ap-
parent wherever we turn our eyes. On the same level
of civilization, the same stage of the. productive arts,
government, etc., the most -populous countries are al-
ways the most wealthy.
Let us take a particular case, and that a case which
of all that can be cited seems at first blush best to sup-
port the theory we are considering — the case of a com-
munity where, while population has largely increased,
wages have greatly decreased, and it is not a matter of
dubious inference but of obvious fact that the gener-
osity of nature has lessened. That community is Cali-
fornia. When upon the discovery of gold the first wave
of immigration poured into California it found a country
in which nature was in the most generous mood. From
the river banks and bars the glittering deposits of thou-
sands of years could, be taken by the most primitive-,
appliances, in amounts which made an oxmee ($16) per ,
day only ordinary wages. The plains, covered with
nutritious grasses, were alive with countless herds of’
horses and cattle, so plenty that any traveler was at
liberty to shift his saddle to a fresh steed, or to kill
a bullock if he needed a steak, leaving the hide, its
Chap. IV. DISPKOOF OF THE MAIiTHUSIAN THEORY 145
' V
only valuable part, for the owner. From the rich soil
which came first under cultivation, the mere plowing
and sowing brought crops that in older countries, if pro-
cured at all, can only be procured by the most thorough
manuring and cultivation. In early California, amid
this profusion of nature, wages and interest were higher
than anywhere else in the world.
This virgin profusion of nature has been steadily giv-
ing way before the greater and greater demands which
an increasing population has made upon it. Poorer and
. poorer diggings have been worked, until now no dig^
gings worth speaking of can be found, and gold mining
requires much capital, large skill, and elaborate machin- ^
ery, and involves great risks. “Horses cost money,’*
and cattle bred on the sage-brush plains of Nevada are
brought by railroad across the mountains and killed in
San Francisco shambles, while farmers are beginning to
save their straw and look for manure, and land is in cul-
tivation which will hardly yield a crop three years out^
of four without irrigation. At the same time wages and
interest have steadily gone down. Many men are now’
glad to work for a week for less than they once de-
manded for the day, and money is loaned by the year
' for a rate which once w'^ould hardly have been thought,
extortionate by the month. Is the connection 'between
the reduced productiveness of nature and the reduced
rate of w’-ages that of cause and effect? Is it true that
w^ages are lower because labor yields less wealth? Oir
the contrary! Instead of the wealth-producing power
of labor being less in California in 1879 than in 1849,
. I am convinced that it is greater. And, it seems to me,
that no one who considers how enormously during these
years the efficiency of labor in California has'been. in-
creased by roads, wharves, flumes, railroads, steamboats,
telegraphs, and machinery of all kinds; by a closer, con-
nection wdth the rest of the world; and by the number-
146
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Booh II.
less economies resulting from a larger population, can
doubt that the return which labor receives from nature
in California is on the whole much greater now than it
Was in the days of unexhausted placers and virgin soil
— ^the increase in the power of the human factor having
more than compensated for the decline in the power of
the natural factor. That this conclusion is the correct
one is proved by many facts which show that the con
sumption of wealth is now much greater, as comparer
with the number of laborers, than it was then. Insteac
of a population composed almost exclusively of men ii
the prime of life, a large proportion of women and chil-
dren are now supported, and other non-producers have
increased in much greater ratio than the population;
luxurj’’ has grown far more than wages have fallen;
where the best houses were cloth and paper shanties,
are now mansions whose magnificence rivals Eurbpeat.
palaces; there are liveried carriages on the streets of
San Francisco and pleasure yachts on her bay; the class
who can live sumptuously on their incomes has steadily
grown; there are rich men beside whom the richest of
the earlier years would seem little better than paupers
' — in short, there are on every hand the most striking and
conclusive evidences that the production and consump-
tion of wealth have increased with even greater rapid-
ity than the increase of population, and that if any
class obtains less it is solely because of the greater in-
equality of distribution.
What is obvious in this particular instance is obvious
where the survey is extended. The richest countries
are not those where nature is most prolific; but those
where labor is most efficient — ^not Mexico, but Massa-
chusetts; not Brazil, but England. The countries where
population is densest and presses hardest upon the capa-
bilities of nature, are, other things being equal, the
countries where the largest proportion of the produce
can be devoted to liixury and the support of non-pro-
Chap IV. DISPROOF OF THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY 147
ducers, the countries where capital overflows, the coun-
tries that upon exigency, such as war, can stand the
greatest drain. That the production of wealth must, in
proportion to the labor employed, be greater in a densely
populated country like England than in new countries
where wages and interest are higher, is evident from
the fact that, though a much smaller proportion of the
population is engaged in productive labor, a much larger
surplus is available for other purposes than that of sup-
' plying physical needs. In a new country the whole
available force of the community is devoted to produc-
tion— ^there is no well man who does not do productive
work of some kind, no well woman exempt from house-
hold tasks. There are no paupers or beggars, no idle
rich, no class whose labor is devoted to ministering to
the convenience or caprice of the rich, no purely literary
or scientific class, no criminal class who live by preying
upon society, no large class maintained to 'guard society
against them. Yet with the whole force of the com-
munity thus devoted to production, no such consumption
of wealth in proportion to the whole population takes
place,, or can be afforded, as goes on in the old country;
for, though the condition of the lowest class is better, and
there is no one who cannot get a living, there is no one
who gets much more — few or none who can live in any-
thing like what would be called luxury, or even comfort,
in the older country. That is to say, that in the older
country the consumption of wealth in proportion to
population is greater, although the proportion of labor
devoted to the production of wealth is less — or that
fewer laborers produce more' wealth; for wealth must
be produced before it can be consumed.
It may, however, be said, that the superior wealth of
older countries is due not to superior productive power,
but to the accumulations of wealth which the 'new coxm-
try has not yet had time to make.
It will be well for a moment to consider this idea of
■i48 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE Book II.
accumulated wealth. The truth is, that wealth can be
accumulated but to a slight degree, and that communi-
ties really lii'e, as the vast majorit}'' of individuals live,
from hand to mouth. Wealth will not bear much ac-
cumulation; except in a few unimportant forms it will
not keep. The matter of the universe, which, when
worked up by labor into desirable forms, constitutes
wealth, is constantly tending back to its original state.
Some forms of wealth will last for a few hours, some
for a few days, some for a few months, some for a few
years; and there are very few forms of wealth that can
be passed from one generation to another. Take wealth
in some of its most useful and permanent forms — ships,
houses, railways, machinery. Unless labor is constantly
exerted in preserving and renewing them, they will al-
most immediately become useless. Stop labor in any
community, and wealth would vanish almost as the jet
of a fountain vanishes when the flow of water is shut
off. Let labor again exert itself, and wealth will almost
as immediately reappear. This has been long noticed
where war or other calamity has swept away wealth,
leaving population unimpaired. There is not less wealth
in London to-day because of the great fire of 1666; nor
yet is there less wealth in Chicago because of the great
fire in 1870. On those fire-swept acres have arisen,
under the hand of labor, more magnificent buildings,
■ filled with greater stocks of goods; and the stranger
who, ignorant of the history of the city, passes along
those stately avenues would not dream that a few years
ago all lay so black and bare. Tlie same principle —
that wealth is constantly re-created — is obvious in every
new city. Given the same population and the same
efficiency of labor, and the town of yesterday will pos-
se^s and enjoy as much as the town founded by the
Romans. No one who has seen Melbourne or San
Francisco can doubt that if the population' of England
Chap. IV. DISPROOF OP THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY
149
.■were transported to New Zealand, leaving all accumu-
lated wealth behind, .New Zealand would soon be as
rich as England is now; or, conversely, that if the
population of England were reduced to the sparseness
of the present population of New Zealand, in spite of
accumulated wealth, they would soon be as poor. Ac-
cumulated wealth seems to play just about such a part
in relation to the social organism as accumulated nutri-
ment does to the physical organism. Some accumulated
wealth is necessary, and to a certain extent it may be
drawn upon in exigencies; but the wealth produced by
past generations can no more account for the consump-
tion of the present than the dinners he ate last yeai
can supply a man with present strength.
But without these considerations, which I allude to
more for their general than for their special bearing, it
is evident that superior accumulations of wealth can'
account for greater consumption of wealth only in cases
where accumulated wealth is decreasing, and that wher-
ever the volume of accumulated wealth is maintained,
and even more obviously where it is increasing, a greater
consumption of wealth must impl3'' a greatei’ production
of wealth. Now, whether we compare different com-
munities with each, other, or the same community at
different times, it is obvious that the progressive state,
which is marked by increase of population, is also
marked bj’- an increased consumption and an increased
accumulation of wealth, not merely in the aggregate,
but per capita. And hence, increase of population, so
far as it hag yet anywhere gone, does not mean a reduc-
tion, but an increase in the average production of wealth.
And the reason of this is obvious. For, even if the
increase of - population does reduce the power of the
natural factor of wealth, by compelling a resort to poorer
soils, etc., it yet so vastly increases the power of the
human factor as more than to compensate. -Twenty
150
POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE
Booh II,
men working together will, where nature is niggardiyj
produce more than twenty times the wealth that one
man can produce where nature is most bountiful. The
denser the population the more minute becomes the sub-
division of labor, the greater the economies of produc-
tion and distribution, and, hence, the very reverse of the
Malthusian doctrine is true; and, within the limits in
which we have reason to suppose increase would still go
on, in any given state of civilization a greater number
of people can produce a larger proportionate amount
of wealth, and more -fully supply their wants, than can
a smaller number.
Look simply at the facts. Can * anything be clearer
than that the cause of the poverty which festers in the
centers of civilization is not in the weakness of the pro-
ductive’forces? In countries where poverty is deepest,
the forces of production are evidently strong enough, if
fully employed, to provide for the lowest not merely
comfort but luxury. The industrial paralysis, the com-
mercial depression which curses the civilized world to-
day, evidently springs from no lack of productive power.
Whatever be the trouble, it is clearly not in the want of
ability to produce wealth.
It is this very fact — ^that want appears where produc-
tive power is greatest and the production of wealth is
largest — that constitutes the enigma which perplexes the
civilized world, and which we are trying to unravel.
Evidently the Malthusian theory, which attributes want
to the decrease of productive power, will not explain it.
That theory is utterly inconsistent with all the facts.
It is really a gratuitous attribution to the laws of God
of results which, even from this examination, we may
infer really spring from the mal-adjustments of men —
an inference which, as we proceed, will become a demon-
stration, For we have yet to find what does produce
poverty amid advancing wealth.
BOOK III
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION
I.— THE INQUIRY .NARROWED TO THE LAWS OF DIS^
TRIBUTION— NECESSARY RELATION OP THESE
LAWS
n — RENT AND THE LAW OF RENT
III.— INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST
rV.-^F SPURIOUS CAPITAL AND OP PROFITS OFTEN
MISTAKEN FOR INTEREST
V.— THE LAW OP INTEREST
YI.— WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES
VII.— CORRELATION AND CO-ORDINATION OF THESE
LAWS
CHAPTER VIII.— THE STATICS OP THE PROBLEM THUS EXPLAINER
The machines that are first invented to perform any particular
movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists
generally discover that with fewer wheels, with fewer principles
of motion than had originally been employed, the same effects
may be more easily produced. The first philosophical systenis,
in the same manner, are always the most complex, and a par-
ticular connecting chain, or principle, is generally thought
necessary to unite every two seemingly disjointed appearances,
but it often happens that one great connecting principle is
afterward found to be sufficient to bind together all the discord-
ant phenomena that occur in a whole species of things. — Adam
Smith, Essay on the Principles Which Lead and Direct Philo-
sophical Inquiries, as Illustrated by the History oj Astronomy.
CHAPTER I
THE INQUIEY NAEROWED TO THE LAWS OF DISTEIBUTION— .
THE NECESSAEY RELATION OF THESE LAWS
The preceding examination has, I think, conclusively
shown that the explanation currently given, in the name
of political economy, of the problem we are attempting
to solve, is no -explanation at all.
That with material progress wages fail to increase,
but rather tend to decrease, cannot be explained by the
theory that the increase of - laborers constantly tends to
divide into smaller portions the capital sum from which
wages are paid. For, , as we have seen, wages do not
come from capital, but are the direct produce of labor.
Each productive laborer, as he works, creates his wages,
and with every additional laborer there is an addition
to the true wages fimd — an addition to the common
stock of wealth, which, generally speaking, is consid-
- erably greater than the amount he draws in wages.
■ Nor, yet, ean it be explained by the theory that nature
yields less to the increasing drafts which an increasing
population make upon her; for the increased efficiency
of labor makes the progressive state a state of continu-
ally increasing production per capita, and the countries
of densest population, other things being equal, are al-
ways the countries of greatest wealth. --
So far, we have only increased the perplexities of the
problem. -We have overthrown a- theory whici^ did, in
some sort of -fashion, explain existing facts; but in doing
^0 have only made existing facts seem more inexplicable.
153
154: THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION Book III.
It is as though, while the Ptolemaic theory was yet in
its strength, it had been proved simply that the sun and
stars do not revolve, about the earth. The phenomena
of day and night, and of the apparent motion of the
celestial bodies, would yet remain unexplained, inevi-
tably to reinstate the old theory unless a better one took
its place. Our reasoning has led us to the conclusion
that each productive laborer produces his ovm wages,
and that increase in the number of laborers should in-
crease the wages of each; whereas, the apparent facts
are that there are many laborers who cannot obtain
remunerative employment, and that increase in the num-
ber of laborers brings diminution of wages. We have,
in short, proved that wages ought to be highest where
in reality they are lowest.
Nevertheless, even in doing this we have made some
progress. Next to finding what we look for, is to dis-
cover where it is useless to look. We have at least nar-
rowed the field of inquiry. For this, at least, is now
clear — that the cause which, in spite of the enormous
increase of productive power, confines the great body of
producers to the least share of the product upon which
they will consent to live,' is not the limitation of capita^
nor yet the limitation of the powers of nature which
respond to labor. As it is not, therefore, to be found in
the laws which bound the production of wealth, it must
be sought in the laws which govern distribution. To
them let us turn.
It will be necessary to review in its main branches the
whole subject of the distribution of wealth. To discover
the cause which, as population increases and the pro-
ductive arts advance, deepens the poverty of the lowest
class, we must find the law which determines what part
of the produce is distributed to labor as wages. To find
the law of wages, or at leash to make sure when we have
Chav, i: THEIR NECESSARY RELATION 155
found it, we must also determine the laws which fix the
part of the produce which goes to capital and the part
which goes to land owners, for as land, labor, and capi-
tal join in producing wealth, it is between these three
that the produce must be divided, Wliat is meant by
the produce or production of a community is the sum
of- the wealth produced by that community — the general
fund from which, as long as previously existing stock is
not lessened, all consumption must be met and all reve-
nues drawn. As, I have already explained, production
does not merely mean the making of things, but includes
the increase of value gained by transporting or exchang-^
ing things. There is a produce of wealth in a purely
commercial community, as there is in a purely agricul--
tural or manufacturing community; and in the one case,
as in the others, some part of this produce will go to
capital, some part to labor, and some part, if land have
any value, to the owners of land. As a matter of fact,
a portion of the wealth produced is constantly going to
the replacement of capital, which is constantly consumed
and constantly replaced. But it is not necessary to take
this into account, as it is eliminated by considering capi-
tal as continuous, which, in speaking or thinking of it,
we habitually do. When we 'speak of the produce, we
mean, therefore, that part of the wealth produced above
what is necessary to replace the capital consumed in
production; and when we speak of interest, or .the return
to capital, we mean what goes to capital after its re-
placement or maintenance.
It is, further, a matter of fact, that in every com-
munity which has passed the most primitive stage some
portion of the produce is taken in taxation and con-
sumed by government. But it is not necessary, in
seeking the laws of distribution, to take this into con-
sideration. We ma;^ consider taxation either as not
■ existing, or as by so much reducing the produce. And
154 the laws of distribution Book III
It is as though, while the Ptolemaic theory was yet in
its strength, it had been proved simply that the sun and
stars do not revolve, about the earth. The phenomena
of day and night, and of the apparent motion of the
celestial bodies, would yet remain unexplained, inevi-
tably to reinstate the old theory unless a better one took
its place. Our reasoning has led us to the conclusion
that each productive laborer produces his own wages,
and that increase in the number of laborers should in-
crease the wages of each; whereas, the apparent facts
are that there are many laborers who cannot obtain
remunerative employment, and that increase in the num-
ber of laborers brings diminution of wages. We have,
in short, proved that wages ought to be highest where
in reality they are lowest.
Nevertheless, even in doing this we have made some
progress. Next to finding what we look for, is to dis-
cover where it is useless to look. We have at least nar-
rowed the field of inquiry. For this, at least, is now
clear — ^that the cause which, in spite of the enormous
increase of productive power, confines the great body of
producers to the least share of the product upon which
they will consent to live,- is not the limitation of capita^
nor yet the limitation of the powers of nature which
respond to labor. As it is not, therefore, to be found in
the laws which bound the production of wealth, it must
be sought in the laws which govern distribution. To
them let us turn.
It will be necessary to review in its main branches the
whole subject of the distribution of wealth. To discover
the cause which, as population increases and the pro-
ductive arts advance, deepens the poverty of the lowest
class, we must find the law which determines what part
of the produce is distributed to labor as wages. To find
the law of wages, or at least to make sure when we have
Chap. 1. THEIR NECESSARY RELATION 155
found it, we must also determine the laws which fix the
part of the produce which goes to capital and the part
which goes to land owners, for as land, labor, and capi-
tal join in producing wealth, it is between these three
that the produce must be divided. Tifiiat is meant by
the produce or production of a community is the sum
of the wealth produced by that community — the general
fund from which, as long as previously existing stock is
not lessened, all consumption must be met and all reve-
nues draira. As. I have already explained, production
does not merely mean the making of things, but includes
the increase of value gained by transporting or exchang-^
ing things. There is a produce of wealth in a purely
commercial community, as there is in a purely agricul-
tural or manufacturing community; and in the one case,
as in the others, some part of this produce will go to
capital, some part to labor, and some part, if land have
any value, to the owners of land. As a matter of fact,
a portion of the wealth produced is constantly going to
the replacement of capital, which is constantly consumed
and constantly replaced. But it is not necessary to take
this into account, as it is eliminated by considering capi-
tal as continuous, which, in speaking or thinking of it,
we habitually do. When we ’speak of the produce, we
mean, therefore, that part of the wealth produced above
what is necessary to replace the capital consumed in
production; and when we speak of interest, or .the return
to capital, we mean what goes to capital after its re-
placement or maintenance.
It is, further, a matter of fact, that in every com-
. munity which has passed the most primitive stage some
portion of the produce is taken in taxation and con-
sumed by government. But it is not necessary, in
seeking the laws of distribution, to take thfs into con-
sideration. We may consider taxation either as not
■ existing, or as by so much reducing the produce. And
156
THE LAWS OF DI5TEIBUTI0N
Book III,
SO, too, of what is taken from the produce by certain
forms of monopoly, which will be considered in a subse-
quent chapter (Chap. IV), and which exercise powers
analogous to taxation. After we have discovered the
laws of distribution we can then see what bearing, if
any, taxation has upon them.
We must discover these laws of distribution for our-
selves— or, at least, two out of the three. For, that they
are not, at least as a whole, correctly apprehended by
the current political economy, may be seen, irrespective
of our preceding examination of one of them, in any of
the standard treatises.
This is evident, in the first place, from the terminoF
ogy employed.
In all politico-economic works we are told that the
three factors in production are land, labor, and capital,
and that the whole produce is primarily distributed into
three corresponding parts. Three terms, therefore, are
needed, each of which shall clearly express one of these
parts to the exclusion of the others. Rent, as defined,
clearly enough expresses the first of these parts — ^that
which goes to the owners of land. Wages, as defined,
clearly enough expresses the second— that part which
constitutes the return to labor. But as to the third
term — ^that which should express the return .to capital —
there is in the standard works a most puzzling ambiguity
and confusion.
Of words in common use, that which comes nearest
to exclusively expressing the idea of return for the use
of capital, is interest, which, as commonly used, implies
the return for the use of capital, exclusive of any labor
in its use or management, and exclusive of any risk, ex-
' cept such as may be involved in the security. The word
profits, as commonly used, is almost synonymous with
revenue; it means a, gain, an amount received in excess
of an amount expended, and frequently includes receipts
Chap, I.
THEIR NECESSARY RELATION
157
that are properly rent; -while it nearly always includes
receipts which are properly wages, as well as compensa-
tions for the risk peculiar to the various uses of capital.
Unless extreme violence is done to the meaning of the
word, it cannot, therefore, be used in political econom}'-
to signify that share of the produce which goes to capi-
' tal, in contradistinction to those parts which go to' labor
and to land o-wners.
Now, all this is recognized in the standard works on
political economy. Adam Smith well illustrates how
wages and compensation for risk largely enter into
profits, pointing out how the large profits of apothe-
caries and small retail dealers are in reality wages for
their labor, and not interest on their capital; and how
the great profits sometimes made in risky businesses,
such as smuggling and the lumber trade, are really but
compensations for risk, which, in the long run, reduce
the returns to capital so used to the ordinary, or below
the ordinary, rate. Similar illustrations are given in
most of the subsequent works, where profit is formally
defined in its common sense, with, perhaps, the exclusion
of rent. ‘ In all these works, the reader is told that profits
are made up of three elements — ^wages of superintend-
ence, compensation for risk, and interest, or the return
for the use of capital.
.Thus, neither in its common meaning nor in the mean-
ing expressly assigned to it in the current political econ-
omy, can profits have any place in the discussion of the
distribution of wealth between the three factors of pro-
duction. Either in its common meaning or in the mean-
ing expressly assigned to it, to talk about the distribution
of ‘wealth into rent, wages, and profits is like talking of
the division of mankind into men, women, and human
beings.
Yet this, to the utter bewilderment of the reader, is
what is done in all the standard works. After formally
158
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION
Book III.
decomposing profits into wages of superintendence, com-
pensation for risk, and interest — the net return for the
use of capital — ^they proceed to treat of the distribution
of wealth between the rent of land, the wages of labor,
and the profits of capital,
I doubt not that there are thousands of men who have
vainly puzzled their brains over this confusion of terms,
and abandoned the effort in despair, thinking that as
the fault could not be in such great thinkers, it must be
in their own stupidity. If it is any consolation to such
men they may turn to Buckle’s “History of Civiliza-
tion,” and see how a man who certainly got a marvel-
ously clear idea of what he read, and who had read
carefully the principal economists from Smith down,
was inextricably confused by this jumble of profits and
interest. For Buckle (Vol, I, Chap, II, and notes) per-
sistently speaks of the distribution of wealth into rent,
wages, interest, anc? profits.
And this is not to be wondered at. For, after
formally decomposing profits into wages of superintend-
ence, insurance, and interest, these economists, m as-
signing causes which fix the general rate of profit, speak
of things which evidently affect only that part of profits
which they have' denominated interest; and then, in
speaking of the rate of interest, either give the meaning-
less formula of supply and demand, or speak of causes
which affect the compensation for risk; evidently using
the word in its common sense, and not in the economic
sense they have assigned to it, from which compensation
for risk is eliminated. If the reader will take up John
Stuart Mill’s -"Trinciples of Political Economy,” and
compare the chapter on Profits (Book II, Chap. 15) with
the chapter on Interest (Book III, Chap. 23), he will
see the confusion thus arising exemplified in the case^ of
the most logical of English economists, in a more strik-
ing manner than I would like to characterize.
O.ap. /.
niEIR NECESSARY RELATION
159
Now, such men have not been led into such confusion
of thought without a cause. If they, one after another,
have followed Dr. Adam Smith, as boys play “follow
my leader,” jumping where he jumped, and falling where
he fell, it has been that there was a fence where he
jumped and a hole where he fell.
The difficulty from which this confusion has sprung
is in the prcacceptcd theory of wages. For reasons
which I have before assigned, it has seemed to them a
self-e\ddent truth that the wages of certain classes of
laborers depended upon the ratio between capital and
the number of laborers. But there are certain kinds of
reward for exertion to which this theoiy evidently will
not apply, so the term wages has in use been contracted
to include only wages in the narrow common sense.
This being the case, if the term interest were used, as
consistently with their definitions it should have been
used, to represent the third part of the division of the
produce, all rewards of personal exertion, save those of
what are commonly called wage-workers, would clearly
have been left out. But by treating the division of
wealth as between rent, wages, and profits, instead of
between rent, wages, and interest, this difficulty is
glossed over, all wages which will not fall under the
preaccepted law of wages being vaguety grouped under
profits, as wages of superintendence.
To read carefully what economists say about the dis-
tribution of wealth is to see that, though they correctly
define it, wages, as they use it in this connection, is what
logicians would call an undistributed term — it does not
mean all wages, but only some wages — viz., the wages
of manual labor paid by an employer. • So other wages
are thrown over with the return to capital, and included
under the term profits, and any clear distinction between
the returns to capital and the returns to human exertion
thus avoided. The fact is that the current political
162
THE LAWS OF DISTHIBUTION
Booh III,
'tvages of superintcndcncG falls under the term wages,
which includes all returns for human exertion, and ex-
cludes everything else; and compensation for risk has
no place whatever, as risk is eliminated when all the
transactions of a community are taken together, I shall,
therefore, consistently with the definitions of political
economists, use the term interest as signifying that part
of the produce which goes to capital.
To recapitulate:
Land, labor, and capital are the factors of produc-
tion. The term land includes all natural opportunities
or forces; the term labor, all human exertion; and the
term capital, all wealth used to produce more wealth.
In returns to these three factors is the whole produce
distributed. That part which goes to land owners a?
payment for the use of natural opportunities is called
rent; that part which constitutes the reward of human
exertion is called wages; and that part which consti-
tutes the return for the use of capital is called interest.
These terms mutually exclude each other. The income
of any individual may be made up from any one, two,
or all three of these sources; but in the effort to discover
the laws of distribution we must keep them separate. •
«
Let me premise the inquiry which we are about to
undertake by saying that the miscarriage of political
economy, which I think has now been abundantly
shown, can, it seems to me, be traced to the adoption
of an erroneous standpoint. Living and making their
observations in a state of society in which a capitalist '
generally rents land and hires labor, and thus seems to
be the undertaker or first mover in production, the great
cultivators of the science have been led to look upon .
capital as the prime factor in production, land as its
instrument, and labor as its agent or tool. This is ap- -
parent on every page — in the form and course of their
Chap, J.
THEIB NECESSAEY RELATION
163
reasoning, in the character of their illustrations, and
even in their choice of terms. Everywhere capital is the
starting, point, the capitalist the central figure. So far
does this go that both Smith and Ricardo use the term
‘‘natural wages” to express the minimum upon which
laborers can live; whereas, unless injustice is natural, all
that the laborer produces should rather be held as his
natural wages. This habit of looking upon capital as
the employer of labor has led both to the theory that
wages depend upon the relative abundance of capital,
and to the theory that interest varies inversely with
wages, while it has led away from truths that but for
this habit would have been apparent. In short, the
misstep which, so far as the great laws of distribution .
are concerned, has led political economy into the jum
gles, instead of upon the mountain tops, was taken
when Adam Smith, in his first book, left the standpoint
indicated in the sentence, “The produce of labor consti-
tutes the natural recompense of wages of labor,” to
take that in which capital is considered as employing
labor and paying wages.
• But when we consider the origin and natural se-
quence of things, this order is reversed; and capital in-
stead of first is last; instead of being the employer of
labor, it is in reality employed by labor. There must
be land before labor can be exerted, and labor must
be exerted before capital can be produced. Capital
is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in
further production. Labor is the active and initial force,,
and labor is therefore the employer of capital. Labor
can be exerted only upon land, and it is from land that
the matter which if transmutes into wealth must be
drawn. Land therefore is the condition precedent, the
field and material of labor. The natural order is land,
labor, capital; and, instead of starting from capital
as our. initial point, we should start from land.
160 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION ^oohlJJ.
economy fails to give any clear and consistent account
of the distribution of wealth. The law of rent is clearly
stated, but it stands unrelated. The rest is a confused
and incoherent jumble.
The very arrangement of these works shows this con-
fusion and inconclusiveness of thought. In no politico-
economic treatise that I know of are these laws of
distribution brought together, so that the reader can
take them in at a glance and recognize their relation
to each other; but what is said about each one is en-
veloped in a mass of political and moral reflections and
dissertations. And the reason is not far to seek. To,
bring together the three laws of distribution as they are
now taught, is to show at a glance that they lack neces-
sary" relation.
The laws of the distribution of wealth are ob\dously
laws of proportion, and must be so related to each other
that any two being given the third may be inferred.
For to say that one of the three parts of a whole is in-
creased or decreased, is to say that one or both of the
other parts is, reversely, decreased or increased. If
Tom, Dick, and Harry are partners in business,' the
agreement which fixes' the share of one in the profits
must at the same time fix .either the separate or the
joint shares of the other two. • To fix Tom’s share at
Wty per cent, is to leave but sixty per cent, to ' be di-
vided between Dick and Harry. To fix Dick’s share at
forty per cent, and Harry’s share at thirty-five per cent,
is to fe Tom’s share at twenty-five per cent.
But between the laws of the distribution of wealth, as
laid down in the standard works, there is no such rela-
tion. If we fish them out and bring them together, we
'find them to be as follows: .
Wages are determined by the ratio between the •
amount of capital devoted to the. payment and subsist-
Chap. I. THEIR NECESSARY RELATION 161
erice of labor and the number of laborers seeking em-
ployment.
Rent is determined by the margin of cultivation; all
lands yielding as rent that part of their produce which
exceeds what an equal application of labor and capital
could procure from the poorest land in use.
Interest is determined by the equation between the
demands of borrowers and the supply of capital offered
by lenders. Or, if we take what is given as the law of
profits, it is determined by wages, falling as wages rise
^nd rising as wages fall — or, to use the phrase of Mill,
oy the cost of labor to the capitalist.
The bringing together of these current statements
of the laws of the distribution of wealth shows at a
glance that they lack the relation to each other which
the true laws of distribution must have. They do not
correlate and co-ordinate. Hence, at least two of these
three laws are either wrongly apprehended or wrongly
stated. This tallies with what we have already seen,
that the current apprehension of the law of wages, and,
inferentially, of the law of interest, will not bear exami-
nation. Let us, then, seek the true laws of the distribu-
tion of the produce of labor into wages, rent, and
interest. The proof that we have found them will be
in their correlation — ^that they meet, and relate, and
mutually bound each other.
With profits this inquiry has manifestly nothing .to
do. We want to find what it is that determines the
division of their joint produce between land, labor, and
capital ; and profits is not a term that refers exclusively
to any one of these three divisions. Of the three parts
into which profits are divided by political economists
— ^namely, compensation for risk, wages of superintend-
ence, and return for the use of capital — ^the latter falls
■under the term interest, which includes all the returns
for the use of capital, and excludes everything else;
162
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION
Bodkin
wages of superintendence falls under the term wages,
which includes all returns for human exertion, and ex-
cludes everything else; and compensation for risk has
no place whatever, as risk is eliminated when all the
transactions of a community are taken together, I shall,
therefore, consistently with the definitions of political
economists, use the term interest as signifying that part
of the produce which goes to capital.
To recapitulate:
Land, labor, and capital are the factors of produc-
tion. The term land includes all natural opportunities
or forces; the term labor, all human exertion; and the
term capital, all wealth used to produce more wealth.
In returns to these three factors is the whole produce
distributed. That part which goes to land owners a?,
payment for the use of natural opportunities is called
rent; that part which constitutes the reward of human
exertion is called wages; and that part which consti-
tutes the return for the use of capital is called interest.
These terms mutually exclude each other. The 'income
of any individual may be made up from any one, two,
or all three of these sources; but in the effort to discover
the laws of distribution we must keep them separate. •
Let me premise the inquiry which we are about to
undertake by saying that the miscarriage of political
economy, which I think has now been abundantly
shown, can,' it seems to me, be traced to the adoption
of an erroneous standpoint. Living and making their
observations in a state of society in which a capitalist '
generally rents land and hires labor, and thus seems to ,
be the undertaker or first rnover in production, the great
cultivators of the science have been led to look upon
capital as the prime factor in production, land as its
instrument, and labor as its agent or tool. This is ap-
parent on every page — in the form and course of their
Chap. /•
THEIR NECESSARY RELATION
163
reasoning, in the character of their illustrations, and
even in their choice of terms. Everywhere capital is the
starting, point, the capitalist the central figure. So far
does this go that both Smith and Ricardo use the term
‘‘natural wages” to express the minimum upon which
laborers can live; whereas, unless injustice is natural, all
that the laborer produces should rather be held as his
natural wages. This habit of looking upon capital as
the employer of labor has led both to the theory that
wages depend upon the relative abundance of capital,
and to the theory that interest varies inversely with
wages, while it has led away from truths that but for
this habit would have been apparent. In short, the
misstep which, so far as the great laws of distribution
are concerned, has led political economy into the juu'
gles, instead of upon the mountain tops, was taken
when Adam Smith, in his first book, left the standpoint
indicated in the sentence, “The produce of labor consti-
tutes the natural recompense of wages of labor,” to
take that in which capital is considered as employing
labor and paying wages.
- But when we consider the origin and natural se-
quence of things, this order is reversed; and capital in-
stead of first is last; instead of being the employer of
labor, it is in reality employed by labor. There must
be land before labor can be exerted, and labor must
be exerted before capital can be produced. Capital
is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in
further production. Labor is the. active and initial force,
and labor is therefore the employer of capital. Labor
can be exerted only upon land, and it is from land that
the matter which it transmutes into wealth must be
drawn. Land therefore is the condition precedent, the
field and material of labor. The natural order is land,
' labor, capital; and, instead of starting from capital
as our initial point, we should start from land.
164
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBL-i'IOls
Beak III.
There is another thing to be observed. Capital is
not a necessary factor in production. Labor exerted upon
land can produce wealth without the aid of capital, and
in the necessary genesis of things must so produce
wealth before capital can exist. Therefore the law of
rent and the law of wages must correlate each other and
form a perfect whole without reference to the law of
capital, as otherwise these laws would not fit the cases
which can readily be imagined, and which to some de-
gree actually exist, in v;hich capital takes no part in
production. And as capital is, as is often said, but
stored-up labor, it is but a form of labor, a subdivision
of the general term labor; and its law must be sub-
ordinate to, and independently correlate with, the law
of wages, so as to fit cases in which the whole produce
is divided between labor and capital, without any de-
duction for rent. To resort to the illustration before
used: The division of the produce between land, labor
and capital must be as it would be between Tom,
Dick, and Harry, if Tom and Dick were the original
partners, and Harry came in but as an assistant to and
sharer with Dick.
CHAPTER II
RENT AND THE LAW OF RENT
The term rent, in its economic sense — ^that is, when
used, as I am using it, to distinguish that part of the
produce which accrues to the owners of land or other
natural capabilities by virtue of their ownership — differs
in meaning from the word rent as commonly used. In
some respects this economic meaning is narrower than
the common meaning; in other respects it is wider.
It is narrower in this: In .common speech, we apply
the word rent to payments for the use of buildings, ma-
chinery, fixtures, etc., as well as to payments for the
use of land or other natural capabilities; and in speak-
ing of the rent of a house or the rent of a farm, we do
not separate the price for the use of the improvements
from the price for the use of the bare land. But in the
.economic meaning of rent, payments for the use of any
of the products of human exertion are excluded, and of
the lumped payments for the use of houses, farms, etc.,
only that part is rent which constitutes the consideration
for the use of the .land — ^that part paid for the use of
buildings or other improvements being properly interest,
as it is a consideration for the use of capital.
It is wider in this: In common speech we speak of
rent only when owner and user are distinct persons.
But in, the economic sense there is also rent where the
same person is both owner and user. Where owner and
user are thus the same person, whatever part of his
income he might obtain bj'- letting the land to another
165
166
THE LAWS OP DISTRIBUTION
«
Book III.
is rent, while the return for his labor and capital are
that part of his income which they would yield him
did he hire instead of owning the land. Rent is also
expressed in a selling price. When land is purchased,
the payment which is made for the oviuiership, or right
to perpetual use, is rent commuted or capitalized. ‘ If
I buy land for a small price and hold it until I can
sell it for a large price, I have become rich, not by wages
for my labor or by interest upon my capital, but by- the
increase of rent. Rent, in short, is the share in the
wealth produced which the exclusive right to the use of
natural capabilities gives to the owner. Wherever land
has an exchange value there is rent in the economic
meaning of the term. Wherever land having a value
is used, either by owner or hirer, there is rent actual;
wherever it is not used, but still has a value, there is
rent potential. It is this capacity of yielding rent which
gives value to land. Until its ownership will confer
some advantage, land has no value.*
Thus rent or land value does not arise from the pro-
ductiveness or utility of land. It in no wise represents
any help or advantage given to production, but simply
the power of securing a part of the results of production.
No matter what are its capabilities, land can yield no
rent and have no value until some one is willing to give
labor or the results of labor for the privilege of using it;
and what any one will thus give depends not upon the
capacity of the land, but upon its capacity as compared '
with that of land that can be had for nothing. I may
have very rich land, but it will yield no rent and have
no value so long as there is other land as good to be
had without cost. But when this other land is appro-
*Jn speaking of the value of land I use and shall use the
words as referring to the value of the bare land. When I wish
to speak of the value of land and improvements I shad use those
words.
Chap. 11. RENT AND THE LAW OP RENT id?
priated, and the best land to be had for nothing is
inferior, either in fertility, situation, or other quality,
my land will begin to have a value and yield rent. And
though the productiveness, of my land may decrease,
yet if the productiveness of the land to be had without
charge decreases in greater proportion, the rent I can
get, and consequently the value of my land, will steadily
increase. Rent, in short, is the price of monopoly, aris-
ing from the reduction to individual ownership of
natural elements which human exertion can neither
produce nor increase.
If one man owned all the land accessible to any com-
munity, he could, of course, demand' any price or condi-
tion for its use that he saw fit; and, as long as his
ownership was acknowledged, the other members of the
community would have but death or emigration as the
alternative to submission to his terms. This has been
the case in many communitiea; but in the modern form
of society, the land, though generally reduced to indi-
vidual ownership, is in the hands of too many different
persons to permit the price which can be obtained for its
use to be fixed by mere caprice or desire. While each
individual owner tries to get all he can, there is a limit
to what he can get, which constitutes the market price
or market rent of the land, and which varies with differ-
ent lands ana at different times. The law, or relation,
. which, under these circumstances of free competition
among all parties (the condition which in tracing out the
principles of political economy is always to be assumed) ,
determines what rent or price can be got by the owner,
is styled the law of rent. This fixed with certainty, we
have more than a starting point from which the laws
which regulate wages and interest ma3'- be traced. For,
as the distribution of wealth is a division, in ascertain-
ing what fixes the share of The produce which goes as
rent, we also ascertain what fixes the share which is left
168
THE LAWB OP DISTEIBUTION
Booh III,
for wages, where there is no co-operation of capital; and
what fixes^ the joint share left for wages and interest,
where capital does co-operate in production.
Forffunately , as to the law ,of rent there is no necessity
for discussion. Authority here coincides with common
sense,*' and the accepted dictum of the current political
economy has the self-evident character of a geometric
axiom. This accepted law of rent, which John Stuart
Mill denominates the pons asinorum of political econ-
omy, is sometimes styled “Ricardo’s law of rent,” from
the fact that, although not the first to announce it, he
first brought it prominentlj^ into notice.f It is:
The rent of land is determined by the excess of its
produce over that which the same application can secure
from the least productive land in use.
This law, which of course applies to land used for
other purposes than agriculture, and to all natural
agencies, such as mines; fisheries, etc., has been exhaust-
ively esqDlained and illustrated by all the leading econo-,
mists since Ricardo. , But its mere statement has all the
force of a self-evident proposition, for it is clear that the
effect of competition is to make the lowest reward for
* I do not mean to say that the accepted law of rent has never
been disputed. In all the nonsense that in the present dis-
jointed condition of the science has been printed as political
economy, it would be hard to find anything that has not been
disputed. But I mean to say that it has the sanction of
all economic writers who are really to be regarded as authority.
As John Stuart Mill says (Book II, Chap. XVI), -"there are ,
few persons who have refused their assent to it, except from not
having thoroughly understood it. The loose and inaccurate way
in which it is often apprehended by those .who affect to refute
it is very remarkable.”' An . observation which has received
many later exemplifications.
t According to McCulloch the law of rent was first stated in
a pamphlet by Dr. James Anderson of Edinburgh in 1777, and
simultaneously in the' beginning of this century by Sir Edward
West, Mr. Malthus, and Mr. Ricardo.
Chav,.!!. RENT AND THE LAW OF EENT ' ,169
which labor and capital will engage in production, the
highest that they can claim; and hence to enable the
owner of more productive land to appropriate in rent all
the return above that required to recompense labor and
capital at the ordinary rate — that is to say, what they
can obtain upon the least productive land in use, or at
the least productive point, where, of course, no rent is
paid.
Perhaps it may conduce to a fuller understanding of
'the law of rent to put it in this form: The ownership
of a natural agent of production will give the power
of appropriating so much of the wealth produced by
the exertion of labor and capital upon it as exceeds the
return which the same application of labor and capital
could secure in the least productive occupation in which
they freely engage.
This, however, amounts to precisely the same thing,
for there is no occupation in which labor and capital
eah engage which does not require the use of land ; and,
furthermore, the cultivation or other use of land will
always be carried to as low a point of remuneration,
all things considered, as is freely accepted in any other
pursuit. Suppose, for instance, a community in which
part of the labor and capital is devoted to agriculture
and part to manufactures. The poorest land cultivated
yields an average return which we will call 20, and 20
therefore will be the average return to labor and capital,
as well in manufactures as in agriculture. Suppose that
from some permanent cause the return in manufactures
is now reduced to 15. Clearly, the labor and capital
engaged in manufactures will turn to agriculture; and
the process will not stop until, either by the extension of
cultivation to inferior lands or to* inferior points on the
same land, or by an increase in the relative value of
manufactured products, owing to the diminution of pro^
duction — or, as a matter of fact, by both processes — the
170
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION
Book 111.
yield to labor and capital in both pursuits has, all
things considered, been brought again to the same level,
so that whatever be the finat point of productiveness at
which manufactures are still carried on, whether it be
18 or 17 or 16, cultivation will also be extended to that
point. And, thus, to say that rent will be the excess
in productiveness over the yield at the margin, or low-
est point, of cultivation, is the same thing as to say
that it will be the excess of produce over what the
same amount of labor and capital obtains in the least
remunerative occupation.
The law of rent is, in fact, but a. deduction from the
law of competition, and amounts simply to the assertion
that as wages and interest tend to a common level, all
that part of the general production of wealth which
exceeds what the labor and capital employed could
have secured for themselves, if applied to the poorest
natural agent in use, will go to land owners in the shape
of rent. It rests, in the last analysis, upon the funda-
mental principle, which is to political economy what the
attraction of gravitation is to physics — ^that men will
seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion.
This, then, is the law of rent. Although many stand-
ard treatises follow too much the example of Ricardo,
who seems to view it merely in its relation to agricul-
ture, and in several places speaks of manufactures yield-
ing no rent (when, in truth, manufactures and exchange
yield the highest rents, as is evinced by the greater
■^’■alue of land in manufacturing and commercial cities),
thus hiding the full importance of the law, yet, ever
since the time of Ricardo, the law itself has been clearly
apprehended and fully recognized. But not so its corol-
laries. Plain as they are, the .accepted doctrine of wages
(backed and fortified not only as has been hitherto ex-
plained, but by considerations whose enormous weight
will be seen when the logical conclusion toward which
Chap. II.
RENT AND THE LAW OF RENT
171
we are tending is reached) has hitherto prevented their
recognition,* Yet, is it not as plain as the simplest
geometrical demonstration, that the corollary of the
law of rent is the law of wages, where the division of
the produce is simply between rent and wages; or the
law of wages and interest taken together, where the
division is into rent, wages, and interest? Stated re-
versely, the law of rent is necessarily the law of wages
and interest taken together, for it is the assertion, that
no matter what the production which results from the
application of labor and capital, these two factors will
receive in wages and interest only such part of the prod-
uce as they could have produced on land free to them
without the payment of rent — ^that is, the least produc-
tive land or point in use. For, if, of the produce, all
►wer the amount which labor and capital could secure
■*'Tom land for which no rent is paid must go to land
owners as rent, then all that can be claimed by labor
and capital as wages and interest is the amount which
they could have secured from land yielding no rent.
Or to put it in algebraic form;
As Produce^^Rent-f-Wages-blnterest,
Therefore, Produce — Rent=Wages-|-Interest.
Thus wages and interest do not depend upon the
produce of labor and capital, but upon what is left
after rent is taken out; or, upon the produce which they
could obtain without paying rent — ^that' is, from the
poorest land in use. And hence, no matter what be the
increase in productive power, if the increase in rent
•keeps pace with it, neither wages nor interest can in-
crease.
The moment this simple relation is recognized, a
* Buckle (Chap. II, History of Civilization) recognizes the'
necessary relation between rent, interest, and wages, but evi-
dently never worked it out.
174
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION
Booh III
want to find is, what fixes the general rate of interest
proper? Tiie different rates of compensation for risk
added to this will give the current rates of commercial
interest.
Now, it iS evident that the greatest differences in
what is ordinarily called interest are due to differences
in . risk ; but it is also evident that between different
countries and different times there are also considerable
variations in the rate of interest proper. In California
at one time two per cent, a month would not have been
considered extravagant interest on security on which
loans could now be effected at seven or eight per cent,
per annum, and though some part of the difference
may be due to an increased sense of general stability,
the greater part is evidently due to some other general
cause. In the United States generally the rate of inter-
est has been higher than in England; and in the newer
States of the Union higher than in the older States;
and the tendency of interest to sink as society progresses
is well marked and has long been noticed. What is the
law which will bind all these variations together and
exhibit their cause?
It is not worth while to dwell more than has hitherto
incidentally been done upon the failure of the current
political economy to determine the true law of interest.
Its speculations upon this subject have not the definite-
ness and coherency which have enanled the accepted
doctrine of wages to withstand the evidence of fact,
and do not require the same elaborate review. That
they tu^ counter to the facts is evident. That interest
^bes Dot depend on the productiveness of labor and
anital is proved by the general fact that where labor
^ d capital are most productive interest is lowest. That
w^does not depend reversely upon wages (or the cost of
' h ) loweriug as wages rise, and increasing as wages
* proved by the general fact that interest is high
Chap. in. INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST 17h
when and where wages are high, and low when and
where wages are low.
Let us begin at the beginning. The nature and func-
tions of capital have already been sufficiently shown,
but even at the risk of something like a digression, let
us endeavor to ascertain the cause of interest before
considering its law. For in addition to aiding our
inquiry by giving us a firmer and clearer grasp of the
subject now in hand, it may lead to conclusions whose
practical importance will be hereafter apparent.
What is the reason and justification of interest? Why
should the borrower pay back to the lender more than
he received? These questions are worth answering, not
merely from their speculative, but from their practical
importance. The feeling that interest is the robbery of
industry is widespread and growing, and on both sides
' of the Atlantic shows itself more and more in popular
literature and in popular movements. The expounders
of the current political economy say that there is no
conflict between labor and capital, and oppose as injuri-
ous to labor, as well as to capital, all schemes for re-
stricting the reward which capital obtains; yet in the
same works the doctrine is laid down that wages and
interest bear to each other an inverse relation, and that
interest will be low or high as wages are high or low.*
Clearly,, then, if this doctrine is ‘correct, the only objec-
tion that • from the standpoint of the laborer can be
logically made to any scheme for the reduction of in-
terest is that it will not work, which, is- manifestly very
weak ground while ideas of the omnipotence of legisla-
tures are yet sp widespread; and though such an objec-
tion may lead to the abandonment of any one particular
scheme, it will not prevent the search for another.
* This is really said of profits, but with the evident meaning
of returns to capital.
172
THE EA’WS OF DISTRIBUTION
Booh m.
flood of light streams in upon what was before inex-
plicable, and seemingly discordant facts range them-
selves under an obvious law. The increase of rent
wliich goes on in progressive countries is at once seen to
be the key which explains why wages and interest, fail
to increase vdth increase of productive power. For
the wealth produced in every community is di\’ided
into two parts by what may be called the rent line,
which is fixed by the margin of cultivation, or the
return which labor and capital could obtain from such
natural opportunities as are free to them without the
payment of rent. From the part of the produce below
this line wages and interest must be paid. All that is
above goes to the owners of . land. Thus, where the
value of land is low, there may be a small production
of wealth, and yet a high rate of wages and interest,
as we see in new countries. And, where the value of
land is high, there may be a very large production of
wealth, and yet a low rate of wages and interest, as we
see in old countries. And, where productive power ,
increases, as it is increasing in all progressive countries,
wages and interest will be affected, not by the increase,
but by the manner in which rent is affected. If the
value of land increases proportionately, all the increased
production will be swallowed up by rent, and wages and
interest wall remain as before. If the value of land in-
creases in greater ratio than productive power, rent
will swallow up even more. than the increase; and while
the produce of labor and capital will- be much larger,
wages and interest will fall. It is_^ only when the value
of land fails to increase as rapidly as productive power,
that usages and interest can increase with the increase of
productive power. All this is exemplified in actual
fact - ‘ .
CHAPTER III
OP INTEREST AND THE CAESE OP INTEREST
Having made sure of the law of rent, we have ob-
tained as its necessary corollary the law of wages,
where the division is between rent and wages; and the
law of wages and interest taken together, where the
division is between the three factors. What proportion
of the produce is taken as rent must determine what
proportion is left for wages, if but land and labor are
concerned; or to be divided between wages and interest,
if capital joins in the production.
But without reference to this deduction, let us seek
each of these laws separately and independently. If,
when obtained in this way, we find that they correlate,
our conclusions will have the highest certainty.
And, inasmuch as the discovery of the law of wages
is the ultimate purpose of our inquiry, let us take up
first the subject of interest.
I have already referred to the difference in meaning
between the terms profits and interest. It may be worth
while, further, to say that interest, as ’an abstract
term in the distribution of wealth, differs in meaning
from the word as commonly used, in this: That it in-
cludes all returns for the use of capital, and not merely
those that pass from borrower to lender; and that it-
excludes compensation for risk, which forms so great
a part of what is commonly called interest. Compensa-
tion for risk is evidently only an equalization of return
oetween different emploj’-ments of capital. Wlrat we
173
174
TELE LAWS OF DISTBIBUTION
Boohlll.
want to find is, what fixes the general rate of interest
proper? The different rates of compensation for risk
added to this will give the current rates of commercial
interest.
Now, it is evident that the greatest differences in
what is ordinarily called interest are due to differences
in. risk; but it is also evident that between different
countries and different times there are also considerable
variations in the rate of inte.rest proper. In California
at one time twm per cent, a month would not have, been
considered extravagant interest on security on ‘ which
loans could now be effected at seven or eight per cent;
per annum, and though some part of the difference
mny be due to an increased sense of general stability,
the greater part is evidently due to some other general /
cause. In the United States generally the rate of inter-
est has been higher than in England; and in the newer
States of the Union higher than in the older States;
and the tendency of interest to sink as society progresses
is well marked and has long been noticed. What is the
law which will bind all these variations together and
exhibit their cause?
It is not worth while to dwell more than has hitherto
incidentally been done upon the failure of the current
political economy to determine the true law of interest.
Its speculations upon this subject have not the definite-
ness and coherency which have enaoled the accepted
doctrine of wages to withstand the evidence of fact,
and do not require the same olaboratp. review. That
they run counter to the facts is evident. That interest
does not depend on the productiveness of labor and
capital is proved by the general fact that where labor
and capital are most productive interest is lowest. That
it does not depend reversely upon wages (or the cost of
labor), lowering as" wages rise, and increasing as wages
.fall, is proved by the general fact that interest is high
Chap. III. INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST 175
when and where wages are high, and low when and
where wages are low.
Let us begin at the beginning. The nature and func-
tions of capital have alreadj’- been sufficiently shown,
but even at the risk of something like a digression, let
us endeavor to ascertain the cause of interest before
considering its law. For in addition to aiding our
inquiry by giving us a firmer and clearer grasp of the
subject now in hand, it may lead to conclusions whose
practical importance will be hereafter apparent.
What is the reason and justification of interest? Wliy
should the borrower pay back to the lender more than
he received? These questions are worth answering, not
merety from their speculative, but from their practical
importance. The feeling that interest is the robbery of
industry is widespread and growing, and on both sides
' of the Atlantic shows itself more and more in popular
literature and in popular movements. The expounders
of the current political economy say that there is no
conflict between labor and capital, and oppose as injuri-
ous to labor, as well as to capital, all schemes for re-
stricting the reward which capital obtains; yet in the
same works the doctrine is laid down that wages and
interest bear to each other an inverse relation, and that
interest will be low or high as wages are high or low.*
Clearly,, then, if this doctrine is 'correct, the only objec-
tion that • from the standpoint of the laborer can be
logically made to any scheme for the reduction of in-
terest is that it will not work, which, is manifestly very
. weak ground while ideas of the omnipotence of legisla-
tures are yet so widespread; and though such an objec-
tion may lead to the abandonment of any one particular
.scheme, it will not prevent the search for another.
* This is really said of profits, but with the evident meaning
of returns to capital.
176
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION
Book in.
Why should interest be? Interest, we are told, in aU
the standard works, is the reward of abstinence. But,
■manifestly, this does not sufficiently account for it. Ab-
stinence is not an active, but a passive quality; it is not
a doing — it is simply a not doing. Abstinence in itself
produces nothing. Why, then, should any part of what
is produced be claimed for it? If I have a sum of
money which I lock up for a year, I have exercised as
much abstinence as though I had loaned it. Yet,
though in the latter case I ■will expect it to be returned
to me with an additional sum by way of interest, in
the former I will have but the same sum, and no in-
crease. But the abstinence is the same. If it be said that
in lending it I do the borrower a service, it may be re-
plied that he also does me a service in keeping it safely
— a service that under some conditions may be very
valuable, and for which I would willingly pay, rather
than not have it; and a service which, as to some forms
of capital, may be even more obvious than as to money.
For there are many forms of capital which "will not
keep, but must be constantly renewed; and many which
are onerous to maintain if one has no immediate use
for them. So, if the accumulator of capital helps the
user of capital by loaning it to him, does not the user
discharge the debt in full when he hands it back?
Is not the secure preservation, the maintenance, the
re-creation of capital, a complete offset to the use?
Accumulation is the end and aim of abstinence.
Abstinence can go no further and accomplish no more;
nor of itself can it even do this. If we -were merely
-to abstain from using it, how much wealth would disap-
pear in a yearl And how little would be left at the
end of two years! Hence, if more is demanded for
abstinence than the safe return of capital, is not labor
wronged? Such ideas as these underlie the widespread
opinion that interest can accrue only at the expense of
'Chap. Ill, INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST 177
labor, and is in fact a robbery of labor which in a
social condition based on justice would be abolished.
The attempts to refute these views do not appear to
me always successful. For instance, as it illustrates
the usual reasoning, take Bastiat’s oft-quoted illustra-
tion of the plane. One carpenter, James, at the expense
of ten days’ labor, makes himself a plane, which will
last in use for 290 of the 300 working days of the year.
William, another carpenter, proposes to borrow the
plane for a year, offering to give back at the end of
that time, when the plane will be worn out, a new plane
equally as good. James objects to lending the plane on
these terms, urging that if he merely gets back a plane
he will have nothing to compensate him for the loss of
the advantage which the use of the plane during the
year would give him. William, admitting this, agrees
not merely to return a plane, but, in addition, to give
James a new plank. The agreement is carried out to
mutual satisfaction. The plane is used up during the
year, but at the end of the year James receives as good
a one, and a plank in addition. He lends the new plane
again and again, until finally it passes into the hands of
his son, “who still continues to lend it,” receiving a
plank each time. This plank, which represents interest,
is said to be a natural and equitable remuneration, as
by giving it in return for the use of the plane, William
“obtains the power which exists in the tool to increase
the productiveness of labor,” and is no worse off than
he would have been had he not borrowed the plane;
while James obtains no more than he would have had if
he had retained and used the plane instead of lending it.
Is this really so? It will be obser-''-ed that it is not
affirmed that James could make the plane and William
could not, for that would be to make the plank the
reward of superior skill. It is only that James had
abstained from consuming the result of his labor until
180
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION
Book in.
a fifty-dollar sewing machine than if I borrow fifty
dollars^ worth of needles; if I borrow a steam engine
than if I borrow a pile of bricks of equal value. Capi-
tal, like vrealth, is interchangeable. It is not one thing;
it is anything to that value within the circle of exchange.
Nor yet does the improvement of tools add to the repro-
ductive power of capital; it adds to the productive power
of labor.
And I am inclined to think that if all wealth con-
sisted of such things as planes, and all production was
such as that of carpenters — ^that is to say, if wealth con-
sisted but of the inert matter of the universe, and pro-
duction of working up this inert matter into different
shapes, that interest would be but the robbery of
industry, and could not long exist. This is not to say
that there would be no accumulation, for though the
hope of increase is a 'motive for turning wealth into
capital, it is not the motive, or, at least, not the main
motive, for accumulating. Children will save their
pennies for Christmas; pirates will add to their buried
treasure; Eastern princes will accumulate hoards of coin;
and men like Stewart or Vanderbilt, having become
-once possessed of the passion of accumulating, would
continue as long as they could to add to their millions,
even though accumulation brought no increase. Nor
yet is it to say that there would be no borrowing or
lending, for, this, to a large extent, would be prompted
by mutual convenience. If William had a job of work
to be immediately begun and James one that would
not commence until ten days thereafter, there might
be a mutual advantage in the loan of the plane, though
no plank should be given.
But all wealth is not of the nature of planes, oi
nlanks, or money, which has no reproductive power;
nor is ail production merely the turning into other forms
of this inert matter of the universe. It is true that
Chap. III.
INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OP INTEREST 181
if I put away money, it will not increase. But supppse,
instead, I put away wine. At the end of a year I will
liave an increased value, for the wine vdll have improved
in quality. Or supposing that in a country adapted
to them, I set out bees; at the end of a year I will have
more swarms of bees, and the honey which they have
made. Or, supposing, where there is a range, I turn
out sheep, or hogs, or cattle; at the end of the year I
•^•ill, upon the average, also have an increase
Now what gives the increase in these cases is some-
tiing which, though it generally requires labor to
utilize it, is yet distinct and separable from labor— the
active power of nature; the principle of grovdh, of re-
production, which everywhere characterizes all the forms
of that mysterious thing or condition which we call
life. And it seems to me that it is this which is the
cause of interest, or the increase of capital over and
above that due to labor. There are, so to speak in
the movements which make up the everlasting flux of
nature, certain vital currents, which will if we use
them aid us, with a force independent of our own
ettorts, in turnmg matter into the forms we desire—
that is to say, into wealth.
, While- many things might be mentioned which like
money, or planes, or planks, or engines, or clothine
have no innate power of increase,.yet other things are
W ^^ich, like
Srn themselves increase in quality up to a cer-
tain point, or, lilm bees or cattle, will of themselves
increase m quantity; and certain other things such a5
seeds, which, though the conditions which eLble tLm
to in^;ease may not be maintained without labor, yet
will, when these conditions are maintained, yield ai in
Now the interchangeability of wealth necessarily in-
i78 THE LAWS OP DISTRIBUTION Book III.
he had accumulated it in the form of a plane — which is
the essential idea of capital.
Now, if James had not lent the plane he could have
used it for 290 days, when it would have been worn out,
and he would have been obliged to take the remaining
ten days of the working year to make a new plane. If
William had not borrowed the plane he would have
taken ten days to make himself a plane, which he could
have used for the remaining 290 days. Thus, if we
take a plank to represent the fruits of a day’s labor
with the aid of a plane, at the end of the year, had no
borrowing taken place, each would have stood with
reference to the plane as he commenced, James with
a plane, and William with none, and each would have
had as the result of the year’s work 290 planks. If
the condition of the borrowing had been what William-
first proposed, the return of a new plane, the same
relative situation would have been secured. William
would have worked for 290 days, and taken the last
ten days to make the new plane to return to James.
James would have taken the first ten days of the year
to make another plane which would have lasted for
290 days, when he would have received a new plane
from William, Thus, the simple return of the plane
would have put each in the same position at the end
of the year as if no borrowing had taken place. James
would have lost nothing to the gain of William, and
William would have gained nothing to the loss of J ames.
Each would have had the return his labor would other-
wdse' have yielded — ^viz., 290 planks, and J ames would
have had the advantage with which he started, a new
plane.
But when, in addition to the return of a plane, a
plank is given, James at .the end of the year will be in
a better position than if there had been no borrowing;
and William in a worse. James will have 29i plank>
Chap. III. INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OP INTEREST 179
and a new plane, and William 289 planks and no plane.
If William now borrows the plank as well as the plane
on the same terms as before, he will at the end of the
year have to return to James a plane, two planks and
a fraction of a plank; and if this ' difference be again
borrowed, and so on, is it not evident that the income
of the one. will progressively decline, and, that of the
other will progressively increase, until at length, if the
operation be continued, the time will come when, as
the result of the original lending of a plane, James will
obtain the whole result of William’s labor — that is to
.say, William will become virtually his slave?
Is interest, then, natural and equitable? There is
nothing in this illustration to show it to be. Evidently
- what Bastiat (and many others) assigns as the basis of
interest, “the power which exists in the tool to increase
the -productiveness of labor,” is neither in justice nor in
fact the basis of interest. The fallacy which makes
.Bastiat’s illustration pass as conclusive with those who
do not stop to analyze it, as we have done, is that with
the loan of the plane they associate the transfer of the
increased productive power which a plane gives to labor.
But this is really not involved. The essential thing
which James loaned to William was not the increased
power which labor acquires from using planes. ■ To sup-
pose 'this, we should have to suppose that the making
and using of planes was a trade secret or a patent right,
when the . illustration would become one of monopoly,
■ not of capital. The essential thing which James loaned
to William was not the privilege of applying his labor
in a more effective way, but the use of the concrete
result of ten daj’-s’ labor. If “the power which exists in
tools to increase the productiveness of labor” were the
cause of interest, then the rate of interest would in-
crease with the march of invention. This is not so. Nor
yet will I be expected to pay more interest if I borrow
180
the laws of distribution
Book IIL
a fifty-dollar sewing machine than if I borrow fifty
dollars worth of needles; if I borrow a steam engine
than if I borrow a pile of bricks of equal value. Capi-
tal, like wealth, is interchangeable. It is not one thing;
it is anything to that value wuthin the circle of exchange.
Nor yet does the improvement of tools add to the repro-
ductive power of capital; it adds to the productive oower
of labor.
^ And I am inclined to think that if all wealth con-
sisted of such things as planes, and all production was
such as that of carpenters — ^that is to say, if wealth con-
sisted but of the inert matter of the universe, and pro-
duction of working up this inert matter into different
shapes, that interest would be but the robbery of
industry, and could not long exist. This is not to say
that there would be no accumulation, for though the
hope of increase is a 'motive for turning wealth into
capital, it is not the motive, or, at least, not the main
motive, for accumulating. Children will save their
pennies for Christmas; pirates will add to their buried
treasure; Eastern princes will accumulate hoards of coin;
and men like Stewart or Vanderbilt, having become
-once possessed of the passion of accumulating, would
continue as long as they could to add to their millions,
even though accumulation brought no increase. Nor
yet is it to say that there would be no borrowing or
lending, for ,this, to a large extent, would be prompted
by mutual convenience. If William- had a job of work
to be immediately begun and James one that would
not commence until ten days thereafter, there might
be a mutual advantage in the loan of the plane, though
no plank should be given.
But all -wealth is not of the nature of planes, oi-
planks, or money, which has no reproductive power;
nor is all production merely the turning into other forios
of this inert matter of the universe. It is true that
Chap. in. INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST 181
if I put away money, it will not increase. But suppose
instead, I put away wine. At the end of a year I will
have an increased value, for the wine vdll have improved
in quahtJ^ Or supposing that in a country aLpted
to them, I set out bees; at the end of a year /will have
more swarms of bees, and the honey which tlmy W
made Or, supposing, where there is a range, I turn
out sheep, or hogs, or cattle; at the end of the year I
upon the average, also have an inc^Lsr ^
iSow what gives the increase in these cases is some-
hmg which, though it generally requires labor to
utilize It, IS yet distinct and separable from labor— the
active power of nature; the principle of gSwth
production, which everywhere characterizes all the forms
mysterious thing or condition which we call
ife. And it seems to me that it is this which is the
ause of interest, or the increase of capital over anH
above that due to labor. There are cn +
the movements which make up the eTOrlasLrflux of
tb^T’ -T uu'*' which will, if we use
eff!, t’ ^ “dependent of our om
efforts, m turning matter- into the forms we desire-
that IS to say, into wealth. aesire—
^ While many things might be mentioned which like
money, or planes, or planks, or engines or nlnlh- ^
have no innate power of increase yet other
mcluded in the terms wealth and ^ T
wne, will of themselves increase in quahtv uu to ’
tam point; or, like bees or cattle, S of ?hem! l
increase m quantity; and certain other thinas such™*
seeds, which, though the conditibns which Shle th
to increase may not be maintained withlf l n
Will, when these conditions are maintdned tifm
crease, or give a return over and aWe that wf n“
ne attributed to labor. ^
Now the interchangeability of wealth necessarily in.
182
the laws of distribution
Book in.
volves an average between all the species of wealth of
any special advantage which accrues from the possession
of any particular species, for no one would keep capital
in one form when it could be changed into a more ad-
vantageous form, No one, for instance, would grind
wheat into flour and keep it on hand for the convenience
of those who desire from time to time to exchange
wheat or its equivalent for flour, unless he could by
.•such exchange secure an increase equal to that which,
.all things considered, he could secure by planting his
wheat. No one, if he could keep them, would exchange
-B, flock of sheep now for their net weight in mutton
to be returned next year; for by keeping the sheep he
would not onl^^ have the same amount of mutton next
year, but also the lambs and the fleeces. No one would
dig an irrigating ditch, unless those who by its aid are ,
enabled to utilize the reproductive forces of nature would
give him such a portion of the increase they recekn
.-as to make his capital yield him as much as theirs
And so, in any circle of exchange, the power of increase
w^hich the reproductive or vital force of nature gives to
some species of capital must average with all; and he
.who lends, or uses in exchange, money, or planes, or
'bricks, or clothing, is not deprived of the power to
obtain an increase, any more than if he had lent or put
to a reproductive use so much capital in a form capable
of increase. .
There is also in the utilization of the variations in the
powers of nature and of man which is effected by ex-
change, an increase which somewhat resembles that
produced by the vital forces of nature. In one place,
for instance, a given amount of labor whl secure 200 in
vegetable food or 100 in animal food. In another place,
these conditions are reversed, and the same amount of
labor wnll produce 100 in vegetable food or 200 in ani-
mal. In the one place, the relative value of vegetable
CSap. HI. interest AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST 183
^ animal food will be as two to one, and in the other
as one to two; and, supposing equal amounts of each
to be required, the same amount of labor will in eithpr
place secure 150 of both. But by devoting labor in the
one place to the procurement of vegetable food and
in the other, to the procurement of animal food' and
exchanging to the quantity required, the people o/each
place will be enabled by the given amount of labor to
procure 200 of both, less the losses aud expenses of
exc ange, so that in each place the produce which is
taken from use and devoted to exchange brings back an
increase. Thus Wliittington’s cat, sent to a Sv coLZ
where cats are scarce and rats are plenty, returns
in bales of goods and bags of gold. ^
Of course, labor is necessary to exchange, as it is' t/i
he utilization of the reproductive forces of nature and
the produce of exchange, as the produce of agriculture
IS clearly the produce of labor; but yet in thp nno '
as in the other, there is a distinguishable force co-operat-
ing with that of labor, which makes it impossiblp
measure the result solely by the amount 7Tabor\l
pended, but renders the amount of capital and the time
It is in use integral parts in the sum of forces
aids labor in all of the different modes of pludS^n
two ^ between the relations of the'
two in such modes of production as consist merelv nf
changing the form or place of matter 'as nlan^o- h
or mining coal; and such modes of production' as
themselves of the reproductive forces of nature or^nf
the power of increase arising from diffpro
distribution of- natural and human powers such S
raising of grain or the exchange of icp fnr
production of the first kind, labor alone is the effi ' ?
cause; when labor stops, .production stops Wh5,°'th
carpenter drops his plane as the sun sets tt, • °
of value, which he with his plane is ?r?ducX;~
184
THE LAWS OF DISTHIBUTION
Book III.
until he begins his labor again the following morning,
^len the factory bell rings for closing, when the mine
is shut do'tt’n, production ends until work is resumed.
The intervening time, so far as regards production,
might as well be blotted out. The lapse of days, the
change of seasons, is no element in the production that
depends solely upon the amount of labor expended. But
in the other modes of production to w’hich I have re-
ferred, and in which the part of labor may be likened
to the operations of lumbermen who throw their logs
into the* stream, leaving it to the current to carry them
to the boom of the sawmill many miles below, time is
an element- The seed in the ground germinates and
grows w'hile the farmer sleeps or plows new fields, and
the everflowing currents of air and ocean bear l^^itting-
ton’s cat toward the rat-tormented ruler in the regions
of romance.
To recur now to Bastiat’s illustration. It is evident
that if there is any reason why William at the end of
the year should return to James more than an equally
good plane, it does not spring, as Bastiat has it, from
the increased power which the tool gives to labor, for
that, as I have shown, is not an element; but it springs
from the element of time — ^the difference of a year be-
tween the lending and return of the plane. Now, if the
view is confined to the "illustration, there is nothing to
suggest how this element should operate, for a plane at
the end of the year has no greater value than a plane
at the beginning. But if we substitute for the plane a
calf, it is clearly, to be seen that to put James in as good
a position as if he had not lent, William at the end
of the year must return, not a calf, but a cow. Or, if
we suppose that the ten days’ labor had been devoted to
planting corn, it is evident that James would not have
been fully recompensed if at the end of the year he had
received simply so much planted - corn, for during the
year the planted corn would have germinated and grown
Chap. HI. INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST 185
vHnd multiplied; and so if the plane had been devoted to
exchange, it might during the year have been turned
over several times, each exchange yielding an increase
to James. Now, therefore, as James’ labor might have
been applied in any of those ways — or what amounts to
the same thing, some of the labor devoted to making
planes might have been thus transferred — he will not
make a plane for William to use for the j’-ear unless he
gets back more than a plane. And William can afford
to give back more than a plane, because the same gen-
eral average of the advantages of labor applied in dif-
ferent modes will enable him to obtain from his labor
an advantage from the element of time. It is this
general averaging, or as we may say, “pooling” of ad-
vantages, which necessarily takes place where the exi-
gencies of society require the simultaneous carrying on
of the different modes of production, which gives to
the possession of wealth incapable in itself of increase an.
advantage similar to that which attaches to wealth
used in such a way as to gain from the element of time.
And, in the last analysis, the advantage which is given
by the lapse of time springs from the generative force
of nature and the varying powers of nature and of
man.
Were the quality and capacity of matter everywhere
uniform, and all productive power in man, there would
be no interest. The advantage of superior tools might
at times be transferred on terms resembling the pay-
ment of interest, but such transactions would be irregular
and intermittent — ^the exception, not the rule. For the
power of obtaining such returns would not, as now, in-
here in the possession of capital, and the advantage of
^me would operate , only , in peculiar circumstances.
iPat I, having a thousand dollars, can certainly let it
out at interest, does not arise from the fact that there
are others, not having a thousand dollars, who will
gladly pay me for the use of it, if they can get it no
1^6 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION Booh 111.
other way; but from the fact that the capital which my
thousand dollars represents has the power of yielding
an increase to whomsoever has it, even though he be a
millionaire. For the price which anything will bring
does not depend upon w'hat the buyer would be willing
to give rather than go without it, so much as upon
what the seller can otherwise get. For instance, a manu-
facturer who wishes to retire from business has ma-
chinery to the value of $100,000. If he cannot, should
he sell, take this $100,000 and invest, it so that it will
3’-ieId him interest, it will be immaterial to him, risk
being eliminated, whether he obtains the whole price at
once or in installments, and if the purchaser has the
requisite capital, which we must suppose in order that
the transaction may rest on its own merits, it will be
immaterial whether he pay at once or after a time. If
the purchaser has not the required capital, it may be
to his convenience that payments should be delayed,
but it would be only in exceptional circumstances that
the seller would ask, or the buyer would consent, to
pay any premium on this account; nor in such cases
would this premium be properly interest. For interest
is not properly a paj'^ment made for the use of capital,
but a return accruing from the increase of capital. If
the capital did not yield an increase, the cases would be
few and exceptional in which the owner v/ould get a
premium. William would soon find out if it did not pay
him to give a plank for the privilege of deferring pay-
ment on James’ plane.
In short, -when we come to analyze production we find
it to fall into three modes — ^viz: - ' .
Adapting, or changing natural products either in
form or in place so as to fit them for the satisfaction of
human desire.
Growing, or utilizing the vital forces of nature, as
by raising vegetables or animals.
Chop. III. INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST 187
Exchanging,, or utilizing, so as to add to the general
sum of wealth, t!ic higher powers of those natural forces
which var>^ with locality, or of those human forces which
var\' with situation, occupation, or character.
In each of these three modes of production capital
may aid labor— or, to speak more precisely, in the first
mode capital may aid labor, but is not absolutely neces-
sary^; in the others capital must aid labor, or is neces-
sa^y^
Now, while by adapting capital in proper forms we
may increase the effective power of labor to impress
upon matter the character of wealth, as when w^e adapt
wood and iron to the form and use of a plane; or iron,
coal, water, and oil to the form and use of a steam
engine; or stone, clay, timber, and iron to that of a
building, yet the characteristic of this use of capital is,
that the benefit is in the use. When, however, we em-
ploy capital in the second of these modes, as when we
plant grain in the ground, or place animals on a stock
farm, or put away wine to improve with age, the benefit
arises, not from the use, but from the increase. And so,
when we employ capital in the third of these modes, and
instead of using a thing we exchange it, the benefit is in
the increase or greater value of the things received in
return.
Primarily, the benefits which arise from use go to
labor, and the benefits which arise from ' increase, to
capital. But, inasmuch as the division of labor and
the interchangeability of wealth necessitate and imply
an averaging of benefits, in so far as these different
modes of production correlate with each other, the bene-
fits that arise from one will average with the benefits
that arise from the others, for neither labor nor capital
wilLbe devoted to any mode of production while any
other mode which is open to thejn will yield a greater
return. That is to say, labor expended in the first mode
188
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION
Book III.
of production will get, not the whole return, but the
return minus such part as is necessary to give to capital
such an increase as it could have secured in the other
modes of production, and capital engaged in the second
and third modes will obtain, not the whole increase,
but the increase minus what is sulBcient to give to labor
such reward as it could have secured if expended in the
first mode.
Thus interest springs from the power of increase
which the reproductive forces of nature, and the in
•effect analogous capacity for exchange, give to capital.
It is not an arbitrary, but a natural thing; it is not the
result of a particular social organization, but of laws
•of the universe which underlie society. It is, therefore,
just.
They who talk about abolishing interest fall into an
■error similar to that previously pointed out as giving
its plausibility to the doctrine that wages are drawn
from capital. When they thus think of interest, they
dihink only of that which is paid by the user of capital
to the owner gf capital. But, manifestly, this is not all
interest, but only some interest. Whoever uses capital
and obtains the increase it is capable of giving receives
interest. If I plant and care for a tree until it comes
to maturity, I receive, in its fruit, interest upon the
capital I have thus accumulated — ^that is, the labor I
have expended. If I raise a cow, the milk which she
yields me, morning and evening, is not merely the re-
ward of the labor then exerted; but interest upon the
capital which my labor, expended in raising her, has ac-
cumulated in the cow. And so, if I use my own capital
in directly aiding production, as by machinery, or in.
indirectly aiding production, in exchange, I receive a
special and distinguishable advantage from the repro-
ductive character of gapital, which is as real, though
perhaps not as clear, as though I had lent my capital
to another and he had paid me interest.
CHAPTER IV
OF SPUEIOUS CAPITAL AND OF PROFITS OFTEN MISTAKEN
FOR INTEREST
The belief that interest is the robbery of industry is,
I am persuaded, in large part due to a failure to dis-
criminate between what is really capital and what is not,
and between profits which are properly interest and
profits which arise from other sources than the use of
capital.. In the speech and literature of the day every
one .is styled a capitalist who possesses what, independ-
ent of his labor, will yield him a return, while what-
ever is thus received is spoken of as the earnings or
takings of capital, and we everywhere hear of the conflict
of labor and capital. Whether there is, in reality, any
conflict between labor and capital, I do not yet ask
the rea'der to make up his mind; but it will be well here
to clear away some misapprehensions which confuse
the judgment.
Attention has already been called to the fact that
land values, which constitute such an enormous part
of what is commonly called capital, are not capital at
all; and that rent, which is as commonly included in the
receipts of capital, and which takes an ever-increasing
portion of the produce of an advancing community, is
not the earnings of capital, and must be carefully sepa-
rated - from interest. It is not necessary now to dwell
further upon this point. Attention has likewise been
called to the fact that the stocks, bonds, etc., which
constitute another great part of what is commonly
called capital, are not capital at all; but, in some of
189
190
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION
Book III.
their shapes, these evidences of indebtedness so closely
resemble capital and in some cases actually perform, or
seem to perform, the functions of capital, while they
yield a return to their owners which is not only spoken
of as interest, but has every semblance of interest, that
it is worth while, before attempting to clear the idea
of interest from some other ambiguities that beset it, to
speak again of these at greater length.
Nothing can be capital, let it alwaj'-s be remembered,
that is not wealth — that is to say, nothing can be capital
that does not consist of actual, tangible things, not the
spontaneous offerings of nature, which have in them-
selves, and not by proxy, the power of directly or in-
directly ministering to human desire.
Thus, a government bond is not capital, nor yet is it
the representative of capital. The capital that was once
received for it by the government has been consumed
unproductively — blown away from the mouths of can-
non, used up in war ships, expended in keeping men
marching and drilling, killing and destroying. The bond
cannot represent capital that has been destroyed. Ic
does not represent capital at all. It is simply a solemn
declaration that the government will, some time or
other, take by taxation from the then existing stocik of
the people, so much wealth, which it will turn over to
the holder of the bond; and that, in the meanwhile, it
will, from time to time, take, in the same way, enough
to make up to the holder the increase which so much
capital as it some day promises to give him would
yield him were it actually in his possession. The' im-
mense sums which are thus taken from the produce
of every modern country to pay interest on public
debts are not the earnings or increase of capital — ^are
not really interest in the strict sense of the term, but
are taxes levied on the produce, of labor and capital,
leaving so much dess for wages and so much less for real
interest:
Chap. IV. OF SPURIOUS CAPITAL AND INTEREST 191
But, .supposing the bonds have been issued for the
deepening of a river bed, the construction of lighthouses,
or the erection of a public. market; or supposing, to em-
body the same idea while changing the illustration, they
have been issued by a railroad company. Here they
do represent capital, existing and applied to productive
(Uses, and like stock in a dividend paying company may
be considered as evidences of the ownership of capital.
But they can be so considered only in so far as they
actually represent capital, and not as they have been
issued in excess of the capital used. Nearly all our
railroad companies and other incorporations are loaded
down in this way. Where one dollar’s worth of capital
hits been really used, certificates for two, three, lour, ii v'c,
or even ten, have been issued, and upon this fictitious
amount interest or dividends are paid with more or less
regularity. Now, what, in excess of the amount due as
interest to the real capital invested, is thus earned by
these companies and thus paid out, as well as the large
sums absorbed by managing rings and never accounted
for, is evidently not taken from the aggregate produce
of the community on account of the services rendered
by capital — it is not interest. If we are restricted to
the' terminology of economic writers who decompose
profits into interest, insurance, and wages of superin-
tendence,, it must fall into the category of wages of
superintendence.
But while wages of superintendence clearly enough
include the income derived from such personal qualities
• as skill, tact, enterprise, organizing , ability, inventive '
power, character, etc., to the profits we are speaking
of’there is another contributing element, which can only
arbitrarily be classed with these — ^the element of mo-
nopoly.
When James I granted to his minion the exclusive
privilege of making gold and silver thread, and prohib-
ited, under severe penalties, every one else from making
198 THE LAWS OF DISTEIBUnON Book III.
culitire, and consequently to a proportionately less
reliance upon the reproductive forces of natui’e, yet this
is accompanied by a corresponding extension of ex-
changes, and hence a greater calling in of the power
of increase which thus arises. So these tendencies, to a
creat extent, and^ probably, so far as v;e have yet gone,
completely, balance each other, and preserve the equi-
librium v/hich fixes the average increase of capital, or
the normal rate of interest.
Now this normal point of interest, which lies be-
tween the necessary maximum and the necessary mini-
mum of the retm-n to capital, must, wherever it rests,
be such that all things (such as the feeling of security,
desire for accumulation, etc.) considered, the reward
of "capital and the reward of labor wdll be equal — ^that is
to =ay, will give an equally attractive result W the exer-
tion or sacrifice involved. It is impossible, perhaps, to
formulate this point, as w'ages are habitually estimated
in quantity, and interest in a ratio; but if we suppose
a given quantity of wealth to be the produce of a given
amount of labor, co-operating for a stated time with a
eertain amount of capital, the proportion jn which the
nroduce would be divided between the labor and the
capital would afford a comparison. There must be
such a point at, or rather, about, which the rate of
interest must tend to settle; since, unless such an equi-
librium were effected, labor would not accept the use of
capital, or capital wmuld not be placed at the disposal
f labor. Tor labor and capital are but different forms
the ' same thing — ^liuman exertion. Capital is pro-
duced by labor; it is, in fact, but labor impressed upon
° ^er__labor stored .up in matter, to be released again
s needed, as the heat of the sun stored up in coal is
^Plea=ed in the furnace. The use of capital in produc-
I-nn is therefore, but a mode of labor. As capital can
used only by being consumed, its use is the expendi-
192
THE LAWS OF DISTEIBUTION
Book in.
such thread, the income which Buckingham enjoyed in
consequence did not arise from the interest upon the
capital invested in the manufacture, nor from the skill,
etc., of those who really conducted the operations, but
from what he got from the king — viz,, the exclusive
privilege — in reality the power to levy a tax for his own
purposes upon all the users of such thread. From a
similar source comes a large part of the profits which
are commonly confounded with the earnings of capital.
Receipts from the patents granted for a limited term of
years for the purpose of encouraging invention are
clearly attributable to this source, as are the returns
derived from monopolies created by protective tariffs
under the pretense of encouraging home industry. But
there is another far more insidious and far more general
form of monopoly. In the aggregation of large masses
of capital under a common control there is developed a
new and essentially different power from that power of
increase which is a general characteristic of capital
and which giwes rise to interest. While the latter is,
so to speak, constructive in its nature, the power which,
as aggregation proceeds, rises upon it is destructive. It
is a power of the same kind as that which James granted
to Buckingham, and it is often exercised with as reck-
less a disregard, not only of the industrial, but of the
personal rights of individuals. A railroad company ap-
proaches a small town as a highwayman approaches
his victim. The threat, ‘Tf you do not accede to our
terms we will leave your town two or three miles to one
side!” is as efficacious as the “Stand and deliver,” when
backed by a cocked pistol. For the threat of the rail-
road company is not merely to deprive the town of the
benefits which the railroad might give; it is to put it
in a far worse position than if no railroad had been
built. ' Or if, where there is water communication, an,
opposition boat is put on; rates are reduced until she is
forced off, and then the public are compelled to pay the -
Chap. IV. OF SPURIOUS . CAPITAL AND ' INTEREST 193
cost of the operation, just as the Rohillas were obliged
to pay the forty lacs with which Surajah Dowlah hired
of Warren Hastings an English force to assist him in
desolating their country and decimating their people.
And just as robbers unite to plunder in concert and
divide the spoil, so do the trunk lines of railroad unite
io raise rates and pool their earnings, or the Pacific
roads form a combination with the Pacific Mail Steam-
ship Company by which toll gates are virtually estab-
lished on land and ocean. And just as Buckingham’s
creatures, under authority of the gold thread patent,
searched private houses, and seized papers and persons
for purposes of lust and extortion, so does the great tel-
egraph company which, by the power of associated capi-
tal, deprives the people of the United States of the full
benefits of a beneficent invention, tamper with corre-
spondence and crush out newspapers which offend it.
It is necessary only to allude to these things, not to
dwell on them. Every one knows the tyranny and
rapacity with which capital when concentrated in large
amounts is frequently wielded to corrupt, to rob, and to
destroy. What I wish to call the reader’s attention to
is that profits thus derived are not to be confounded
with the legitimate returns of capital as an agent of pro-
duction. They are for the most part to be attributed
to a maladjustment of forces in the legislative depart-
ment of government and to a blind adherence to ancient
barbarisms and the superstitious reverence for the
technicalities of a narrow profession in. the adminis-
tration of law; while the general cause which in ad-
vancing communities tends, with the concentration of
wealth, to the concentration of power, is the solution
of the great problem we are seeking for, but have not
j^et found.
Any analysis will show that much of the profits which
are, in common thought, confounded with interest are
in reality due, not to the power of capital, but to the
194
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION
Book m.
po\\ei of concentrated capital, or of concentrated capi-
tal acting upon bad social adjustments. And it will also
show ^ that what are cleBrly and properly wages of
superintendence are very freQuently confounded with
the earnings of capital.
And, so, profits properly due to the elements of risk
are frequently confounded with interest. Some people
acquire wealth by faking chances which to the ma-
jority of people must necessarily bring loss. Such are
many forms of speculation, and especially that mode of
gambling knovm as stock dealing. Nerve, judgment,
the possession of capital, skill in what in lower forms
of gambling are knonm as the arts of the confidence
man and blackleg, give advantage to the "'individual;
but, just as at a gaming table, whatever one gains some
one else must lose.
Now, taking the great fortunes that are so often re-
ferred to as exemplifying the accumulative power of
capital — the Dukes of Westminster and Marquises of
Bute, the Rothschilds, Astors, Stewarts, Vanderbilts,
Goulds, Stanfords, and Floods — it is upon examination
readily seen that they have been built up, in greater
or less part, not by interest, but by elements such as
we have been reviewing.
How necessary it is to liote the distinctions to which
I have been calling attention is shown in current dis-
cussions, where the shield seems alternately white or
black as the standpoint is shifted from one side to
the other. On the one hand we are called upon to
-see, in the existence of deep poverty side by side with
rast accumulations of wealth, the aggressions of capital
on labor, and in reply it is pointed out that capital aids
labor, and hence we are asked to conclude that there is
nothing tin just or unnatural in the wide gulf between
rich and poor; that wealth is but the reward of industry,
intelligence, and thrift; and poverty but the punish-
ment of indolence,' ignorance, and imprudence.
CHAPTER V
\
THE LAW OF INTEREST
Let US turn now to the law of interest, keeping in
mind two things to which attention has heretofore been
called — :
First — ^That it is not capital which employs labor,
but labor which employs capital.
Second — That capital is not a fixed quantity, but can
always be increased or decreased, (1) by the "greater
or less application of labor to the production of capital^
and (2) by the conversion of wealth into capital, oi
capital into wealth, for capital being but wealth applied
in a certain way, wealth is the larger and inclusive
term-
It- is manifest that under conditions of freedom the
maximum that can be given for the use of capital will be
the increase it will bring, and the minimum or zero
will be the replacement of capital; for above the one
point the" borrowing of capital would involve a loss, and
below the other, capital could not be maintained.
Observe, again: It is not, as is carelessly stated by
some writers, the increased efficiency given to laboL by
the adaptation of capital to any special form or use
which fixes this maximum, but the average power, of
increase which belongs to capital generally. The power
of applying itself in advantageous 'forms is si power of
labor,' which capital as capital cannot claim nor share.
A bow and arrows will enable an Indian to kill let u?
say, a buffalo every day, while with sticks and stones
196
THE LAWS OF DISTEIBUTION
Book HI.
he could hardly kill one in a week; but the weapon
rnaker of the tribe could not claim from the hunter
six out of every seven buffaloes killed as a return for
the use of a bow and arrows; nor will capital invested
in a woolen factory yield to the capitalist the difference
between the produce of the factory and v/hat the same
amount of labor could have obtained with the spinning-^
wheel and handloom. William when he borrows a plane
from James does not in that obtain the advantage of
the increased efSciency of labor when using a plane for
the smoothing of boards over what it has when smooth-
ing them with a shell or hint. The progress of knowl-
edge has made the advantage involved in the use of
planes a common property and power of labor. What
he gets from James is merely such advantage as the
element of a year’s time will give to the possession of
so much capital as is represented by the plane.
Now, if the vital forces of nature which give an ad-
vantage to the element of time be the cause of interest,
it would seem to follow that this maximum rate of inter-
est would be determined by the strength of these forces
and the extent to which they are engaged in production.
But while the reproductive force of nature seems to vary
enormously, as, for instance, between the salmon, which
spawns thousands of eggs, and the whale, which brings
forth a single calf at intervals of years; between the
rabbit and the elephant, the thistle and the gigantic
redwood, it appears from the way the natural balance
is maintained that there is an equation between the
reproductive and destructive forces of nature, which
in effect brings the principle of increase to a uniform
point. This natural balance man has witWn narrow
limits the power to disturb, and by the modification of
natural conditions may avail himself at will of the vary-
ing strength of the reproductive force in nature. But
when he does' so, there arises from the wide scope of hia
Chap. Y. THE LAW OF INTEREST 197-
desires another principle which brings about in the in-
crease of wealth a similar equation and balance to that
which is effected in natm’e between the different forms
of life. This equation exhibits itself through values.
If, in a country adapted to both, I go to raising rabbits
and you to raising horses, my rabbits may, until the
natural , limit is reached, increase faster than 3’'our
horses. But my capital will not increase faster, for
the effect of the vaiying rates of increase will be to
lower the value of rabbits as compared with horses,
and to increase the value of horses as compared with
rabbits.
Though the varying strength of the vital forces of
nature is thus brought to uniformity, there may be a
difference in the different stages of social development
as to the proportionate extent to which, in the aggre-
gate production of wealth, these vital forces are enlisted.
But as to this, there are two remarks to be made. In
the first place, although in such a country as England
the part taken by manufactures in the aggregate wealth
production has very much increased as compared with
the part taken by agriculture, yet it is to be noticed that
to a very great extent this is true only of the political ,
or geographical division, and not of the industrial com-
munity. For industrial communities are not limited by
political divisions, or bounded by seas or mountains.
They are limited only by the scope of their exchanges,
and the proportion which in the industrial economy of
England agriculture and stock-raising bear to manu-
factures is averaged with Iowa and Illinois, with Texas
and California, with Canada and India, with Queens-
land and the Baltic — in short, with every country to
which the world-wide exchanges of England extend. In
the next place, it is to be remarked that although in
■ ihe progress of civilization the tendency is to the rela-
dve increase of manufactures, as compared with agri- -
198
THE LAWS OF DISTEIBHTION
Booh III.
culture; and consequently to a proportionate^ less
reliance upon the reproductive forces of nature; yet this
is accompanied by a corresponding extension of ex-
changes, and hence a greater calling in of the power
of increase which thus arises. So these tendencies, to a
great extent, and, probabh", so far as v/e -have yet gone,
completely, balance each other, and preserve the equi-
librium which fixes tlie average increase of capital, or
the normal rate of interest.
Now, this normal point of interest, which lies be-
tween the necessary maximum and the necessary mini-
mum of the return to capital, must, wherever it rests,
be sueli that all things (such as the feeling of security,
desire for accumulation, etc.) considered, the reward
of capital and the rew'ard of labor will be equal — ^that is
to say, will give an equally attractive result for the exer-
tion or sacrifice involved. It is impossible, perhaps, to
formulate this point, as wages are habitually estimated
in quantity, and interest in a ratio; but if we suppose
a given quantity of wealth to be the produce of a given
amount of labor, co-operating for a stated time with a
certain amount of 'capital, the proportion jn which the
produce would be divided between the labor and the
capital "would afford a comparison. There must be
such a point at, or rather, about, which the rate of
interest must tend to settle; since, unless such an equi-
librium were effected, labor would not accept the use of
capital, or capital would not be placed at the disposal
of labor. For labor and capital are but different forms
of the same thing — human exertion. Capital is pro-
duced by labor; it is, in fact, but labor impressed upon
matter — labor stored .up in matter, to be released again
as needed, as the heat of the sun stored up in coal is
released in the furnace. The use of capital in produc-
tion is, therefore, but a mode of labor. As capital ^n
be used only by being consumed, its use is the expendi-
Chav, y- the law of INTEREST - 199
ture of labor, and for the maintenance of capital, its
production by labor must be commensurate with ity
consumption in aid of labor. Hence the principle that,
under circumstances which permit free competition, oper-
ates to bring wages to a common standard and profits
to a substantial equality — ^the principle that men will
seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion — '
operates to establish and maintain this equilibrium
between wages and interest.
This natural relation between interest and wages —
this equilibrium at which both will represent equal re-
turns to equal exertions — ^may be stated in a form which
suggests a relation of opposition; but this opposition is
only apparent. In a partnership between Dick and
Harry, the statement that Dick receives a certain pro-
portion of the profits implies that the portion of Harry
is less or greater as Dick’s is greater or less; but where,
as in this case, each gets only what he adds to the com-
mon fund, the increase of the portion of the one does
not decrease what the other receives. ' ■
And this relation fixed, it is evident that interest and
wages must rise and fall together, and . that interest
cannot be increased without increasing wages; nor wages
lowered without depressing interest. For if wages fall,
interest must also fall in proportion, else it becomes
more profitable to turn labor into capital than to apply
it directly; while, if interest falls, wages must likewise
proportionately fall, or else the increment of capital
would be checked.
We are, of course, not speaking of particular wages
and particular interest, but of the general rate of wages
and the general rate of -interest, meaning always by
interest the return which capital can secure, less insur-
ance and wages of superintendence. In a particular
case, or a particular employment, the tendency of wages
and interest to an equilibrium may be impeded; but
200
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION
Booh III.
bet^ GGn the general rate of wages and the general rate
of interest, this tendency must be prompt to act. For
though in a particular branch of production the line
may be clearly drawn between those who furnish labor
and those who furnish capital, yet even in communities
where there is the sharpest distinction between the gen-
eral class laborers and the general class capitalists,
these two classes shade off into each other by imper-
ceptible gradations, and on the extremes where the two
classes meet in the same persons, the interaction which
restores equilibrium, or rather prevents its disturbance,
can go on without obstruction, whatever obstacles may
exist where the separation is complete. And, further-
more, it must be remembered, as has before been stated,
that capital is but a portion of wealth, distinguished
from wealth generally only by the purpose to which it
is applied, and, hence, the whole body of wealth has
upon the relations of capital ancl labor the same equaliz-
ing effect that a fly-wheel has upon the motion of ma-
chinery, taking up . capital .when it is in excess and
giving it out again when there is a deficiency, just as
a jeweler may give his wife diamonds to wear when he
has a superabundant stock, and put them in his show-
case again when his stock becomes reduced. Thus any
tendency on the part of interest to rise above the equi-
librium with wages must immediately beget not only
a tendency to direct labor to the production of capital,
but also the application of wealth to the uses of capital;
while any tendency of wages to rise above the equilib-
rium with interest must in like manner beget not only a
tendency to turn labor from the production of capital,
but also to lessen the proportion of capital by diverting
from a productive to a non-productive use some of the
articles of wealth of which capital is composed.
To recapitulate: There is a certain relation or ratio
between wages and interest, fixed by causes, which, if
Chap. V.
THE LAW OF INTEREST
201
not absolutely permanent, slowly change, at which
enough labor will be turned into capital to sup-
ply the capital which, in the degree of knowledge, state
of the arts, density of population, character of occupa-
tions, variety, extent and rapidity of exchanges, will be
demanded for production, and this relation or ratio the
interaction of labor and capital constantly maintains;
hence interest must rise and fall with the rise and fall
of wages.
To illustrate: The price of flour is determined by the
price of wheat and cost of milling. The cost of milling
varies slowly and but little, the difference being, even
at long intervals, hardly perceptible; while the price of
wheat varies frequently and largely. Hence we correctly
say ,that the price of flour is governed by the price of
wheat. Or, to put the proposition in the same form as
the preceding: There is a certain relation or ratio be-
tween the value of wheat and the value of flour, fixed
by the cost of milling, which relation or ratio the inter-
action between the demand for flour and the supply of
wheat constantly maintains; hence the price of flour
must rise and fall with the rise and fall of the price of
wheat.
Or, as, leaving the connecting linlc, the price of wheat,
to inference, we say that the price of flour depends upon
the character of the seasons, wars, etc., so may we put
the law of interest in a form which directly connects
it with the law of rent, by saying that the general rate
of interest will be determined by the return to capital
upon the poorest land to which capital, is freely applied
— ^that is to say, upon the best land open to it without
the payment of rent. Thus we bring the law of interest
• into a form which shows it to be a corollary of the law
of rent.
We may prove this conclusion in another way: For
that interest must decrease as rent increases, we can
J02
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION
Book 111.
plainly see if we eliminate wages. To do this, we must,
to be sure, imagine a universe organized on totally dif-
ferent principles. Nevertheless, wc may imagine what
Carlyle would call a fool’s paradise, where the produc-
tion of wealth went on without the aid of labor, and
solely by the reproductive force of capital — where sheep
bore ready-made clothing on their backs, cows presented
butter and cheese, and oxen, when the3'' got to the proper
point of fatness, carved themselves into beefsteaks and
Toasting ribs; where houses grew from the seed, and a
jackknife thrown upon the ground would take root and
in due time bear a crop of assorted cutler}^ Imagine
certain capitalists transported, with their capital in ap-
propriate forms, to such a place. Manifestly, they would
get, as the return for their capital, the whole amount of
wealth it produced only so long as none of its produce
was demanded as rent. Wlien rent arose, it would come
out of the produce of capital, and as it increased, the
return to the owners of capital must necessarily dimin-
ish. If v/e imagine the place where capital possessed
this power of producing wealth without the aid of labor
to be of limited extent, say an island, we shall see that
as soon as capital had increased to the limit of the
island to support it, the return to capital must fall to
1 trifle above its minimum of mere replacement, and the
!and owners would receive nearly the whole produce as
rent, for the only alternative capitalists would have
would be to throw their capital into the sea. Or, if we
imagine such an island to be in communication with
the rest of the world,, the return to capital would settle
at the rate of return in other places. Interest there
Jvould be neither higher, nor lower than anywhere else.
Rent would obtain the whole of the superior advantage,
and the land of such , an island would have a great
value.
To sum up, the law of interest is this:
Chap. V.
THE LAW OF INTEREST
203
The relation betivcen wages and interest is determined
by the average power oj increase which attaches to capi-
tal jrom its use in reproductive modes, rent arises,
interest will fall as wages fall, or will be determined by
the margin of cultivatio7}.
I have endeavored at this length to trace out and
illustrate the law of interest more in deference to the
existing terminology and modes of thought than from
the real necessities of our inquiry, were it unembar-
rassed by befogging discussions. In truth, the primary'
division of wealth in distribution is dual, not tripartite.
Capital is but a form of labor, and its distinction from
labor is in reality but a subdivision, just as the division
of labor into skilled and unskilled would be. In oui
examination we have reached the same point as would
have been attained had we simply treated capital as
a form of labor, and sought the law which divides the
produce between rent and wages ; that is ' to say, be-
tween the possessors of the two factors, natural sub-
stances and powers, and human exertion — ^which tw,?
factors by their imion produce all wealth.
CHAPTER VI
WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES
We have by inference already obtained the law of
wages. But to verify the deduction and to strip the
subject of all ambiguities, let us seek the law from an
independent starting point.
There is, of course, no such thing as a common rate
of wages, in the sense that there is at any given time
and place a common rate of interest. Wages, which in-
clude all returns received from labor, not only vary
with the differing powers of individuals, but, as the
organization of society becomes elaborate, vaiy largely
as between occupations. Nevertheless, there is a cer-
tain general relation between all wages, so that' we ex-
press a clear and well-understood idea when we say
that wages are higher or lower in one time or place than
in another. In their degrees, wages rise and fall in
obedience to a common law. "lYhat is this law?
The fundamental principle of human action — ^the law
othat is to political economy what the law of gravita-
tion r to physics — is that men seek to gratify, their
desires with the' least exertion. Evidently, this principle
must bring to an equality, through the competition it
induces, the reward gained by equal exertions under
similar circumstances. When men work for themselves,
this equalization will be largely effected by the equa-
tion of prices; and between those who work for them-
selves and those who work for others, the same tendency
to equalization will operate. Now, under this principle,
204
Chav. VI. WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES 205
what, in conditions of freedom, will be the terras at
which one man can hire others to work for him? Evi-
dently, they will be fixed by what the men could make
if laboring for themselves. The principle which will
prevent him from having to give anything above this,
except what is necessar}’- to induce the change, will also
prevent them from taking less. Did they demand more,
the competition of others would prevent thewi from
getting employment. Did he offer less, none would ac-
cept the terms, as they could obtain greater results by
working for themselves. Thus, although the employer
wishes to pay as litUe as possible, and the employee
to recei'''^e a? muck as possible, wages will be fixed by
the value or produce of such labor to the laborers them-
selves. If wages are temporarily carried either above
or below this line, a tendency to carry them back at
once arises.
But the result, or the earnings of labor, as is readily
seen in those primary and fundamental occupations in
which labor first engages, and which, even in the most
highly developed condition of society, still form the base
of production, does not depend merely upon the inten-
sity or quality of the labor itself. Wealth is the prod-
uct of two factors, land and labor, and what a given
amount of labor will yield will varj’- with the powers
of the natural opportunities to which it is applied. This
being the case, the principle that men seek to gratify
their desires with the least exertion will fix wages at
the produce of such labor at the- point of highest natural
productiveness open to it. Now, by virtue of the same
principle, the highest point of natural productiveness
open to labor under existing -conditions will be the low-
est point at which production continues, for men, im-
pelled by a supreme law of the human mind to seek
the satisfaction of their desires with the least exertion,
will not expend labor at a lower "point of productiveness
206
THE LAWS OF DISTHIBUTION
Book 111
■while a higher is open to them. Thus the "wages which
an^ employer must pay will be measured by the lowest
point of natural productiveness to which- production
extends, and wages wall rise or fall as this point rises
or falls.
To illustrate: In a simple state of society, each man,
as is the primitive mode, works for himself — ^some in
hunting, let us say, some in fishing, some in cultivating
the ground. Cultivation, we will suppose, has just be-
gun, and the land in use is all of the same quality,
yielding a similar return to similar exertions. Wages,
therefore — for, though there is neither employer nor
employed, there are yet wages — ^will be the full produce
of labor, and, making allowance for the difference of
agreeableness, risk, etc., in the three pursuits, they
will be on the average equal in each — ^that is to say,
equal exertions will yield equal results. Now, if one of
their number wishes to employ some of his fellows to
work for him instead of for themselves, he must pay
wages fixed by this full, average produce of labor.
’ Let a period of time elapse. Cultivation has ex-
tended, and, instead of land, of the same quality, em-r
braces lands of different qualities. Wages, now, will
not be as before, the average produce of labor. They
will be the average produce of labor at the margin of
cultivation, or the point of lowest return. For, as men
seek to satisfy their desires with the least possible exer-
tion, the point of lowest return in cultivation must yield
lo labor -a return equivalent to the average return in
hunting and fishing.* .Labor will no longer yield equal
returns to equal exertions, but those who expend their
labor on the superior land will obtain a greater produce
for the same exertion than those who cultivate the in-
ferior land. Wages, however-, will still be equal, for this
♦This equalization -wiil be efiected by the equation of pricea
cniav. VI. WAGES AND THE LAW 'OF WAGES '207
excess which the cultivators of the superior land receive
is in reality rent, and if land has been subjected to indi-
vidual ownership will give it a value. Now, if, under
these changed circumstances, one member of this com-
munity wishes to hire others to work for him, he will
have to pay only what the labor yields at the lowest
point of oidtivation. If thereafter the margin of culti-
vation sinks to points of lower and lower productiveness,
so must wages sink; if, on the contrary, it rises, so also
must wages rise; for, just as a free body tends, to take
the shortest route to the earth’s center, so do men seek
the easiest mode to the gratification of their desires.
Here, then, we have the law of wages, as a deduction
from a principle most obvious and most universal. That
wages depend upon the margin of cultivation — ^that they
will be greater or less as the produce which labor can
obtain from the highest natural opportunities open to
it is greater or less, flows from the principle that men
will seek to satisfy their wants with the least exertion.
Now, if we turn from simple social states to the com-
plex phenomena of highly civilized societies, we shall
find upon examination that they also fall under this law.
■ In such societies, wages differ widely, but they still
bear a more or less definite and obvious relation to each
. other. This relation is not invariable, as at one time &.
philosopher of repute may earn by his lectures many fold
the wages of the best mechanic, and at another can
hardly hope for the pay of a footman; as in a great
city occupations may yield relatively high wages, which
in a new settlement would yield relatively low wages;
yet these variations between wages may, under all con-
ditions, and in spite of arbitrary divergences caused by
custom, law, etc., be traced to certain circumstances. In
one of his most interesting chapters Adam Smith thus
enumerates the principal circumstances “which make
up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments
208'
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION
Booh III.
and counter-balance a great one in others: First, the
agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments
themselves. Secondly, the easiness and cheapness, 'or the
diflSculty and expense of learning them. Thirdly, the
constancy or inconstancy of employment in them.
Foui’ilily, the small or great trust which must be re-
posed in them. Fifthly, the probability or improbability
of success in them.” * It is not necessary to dwell in
detail on these causes of variation in wages between
different employments. They have been admirably ex-
plained and illustrated by Adam Smith and the econo-
mists ‘who have followed him, who' have well worked
out the details, even if they have failed to apprehend
the main law.
The effect of all the circumstances which give rise to
the differences between wages in different occupations
may be included as supply and demand, and it is per-
fectly correct to say that the wages in different occupa-
tions will vary relatively according to differences in the
supply and demand of labor — ^meaning by demand the
call which the community as a whole makes for services
of the particular kind, and by supply the relative amount
of labor which, under the existing conditions, can be
determined to the performance of those particular serv-
ices. But though this is true as to the relative differ-
ences of wages, when it is said, as is commonly said,
that the general rate of wages is ■ determined by supply
and demand, the words are meaningless. For supply
and demand are but relative terms. The supply of labor
can only mean labor offered in exchange for labor or
the produce of labor, and the demand for labor can only
mean labor or the produce of labor offered in exchange
for labor. Supply is thus demand, and demand supply,
* This last, which is analogous to the element of risk in profits,
accounts for the high w^es of successful lawyers, physicians,
contractors, actors, etc.
Chap. VJ. WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES 20&
and, in the whole community, one must be co-extensive
with the other. This is clearly apprehended by the cur-
rent political economy in relation to sales, and the rea-
soning of Ricardo, Mill, and others, which proves that
alterations in supply' and demand cannot produce a gen-
eral rise or fall of values, though they may cause a rise
or fall in the value of a particular thing, is as applicable
to labor. What conceals the absurdity of speaking gen-
erally of supply and demand in reference to labor is
the habit of considering the demand for labor as spring-
ing from capital and as something distinct from labor;
but the analysis to which this idea has been heretofore
subjected has sufficiently shown its fallacy. It is in-
,deed evident from the mere statement, that wages can
never permanently exceed the produce of labor, and
hence that there is no fund from which wages can for
any. time be drawn, save that which labor constantly
creates.
But, though all the circumstances which produce the
differences in wages between occupations maj’’ be con-
sidered as operating through supply and demand, they,
or rather, their effects, for sometimes the same cause
operates in both ways, may be separated into two
classes, according as they tend only to raise apparent
wages or as they tend to raise real wages — ^that is, to
increase the average reward for equal exertion. The
high wages of some occupations much resemble what
Adam Smith compares them to, the prizes of a lottery,
in which the great gain of one is made up from the
losses of many others. This is not only tine of the
professions bj" means of which Dr. Smith illustrates
the principle, but is largely true of the wages of superin-
tendence in mercantile pursuits, as shown by the fact
that over ninety per cent, of the mercantile firms that
commence business ultimately fail. The higher wages
of those occupations which can- be prosecuted only in
Chap. VI. WAGES AND THE LAW OP WAGES 211
lo any particular pursuit is nowhere absolutely fixed.
All mechanics could act as laborers, and many laborers
could readily become mechanics; all storekeepers could
act as shopmen, and many shopmen could easily become
storekeepers; many farmers would, upon inducement,
become hunters or miners, fishermen or sailors, and many
hunters, miners, fishermen, and sailors know enough of
farming to turn their hands to it on demand. In each
occupation there are men who unite it nuth others, or
who alternate between occupations, while the young men
who are constantly coming in to fill up the ranks of
labor are drawn in the direction of the strongest induce-
ments and least resistances. And further than this, all
the gradations of wages shade into each other by im-
perceptible degrees, instead of being separated by
clearly defined gulfs. The wages, even of the poorer
paid mechanics, are generally higher than the wages of
simple laborers, but there are always some mechanics
^ho do not, on the whole, make as much as some labor-
ers; the best paid lawyers receive much higher wages
than the best paid clerks, but the best paid clerks make
more than some lawyers, and in fact the worst paid clerks
make more than the worst paid lawyers. Thus, on the
“Verge of each occupation, stand those to whom the in-
ducements between one occupation and another are so
nicely balanced that the slightest change is sufficient to
determine their labor in one direction or another. Thus,
any increase or decrease in the demand for labor of a
certain kind cannot, except temporarily, raise wages in
that occupation above, nor depress them below, the
relative level with wages in other occupations, which is
determined by the circumstances previously- adverted'
, to, such ,as relative agreeableness or continuity of em-
ployment, etc. Even, as experience shows, where arti-
ficial barriers are imposed to this interaction, such as
umiting laws, guild regulations, the establishment of
212
THE JDAWS OP DISTRIBUTION
Book III
caste, etc., they may interfere "Ruth, but cannot prevent,
the maintenance^ of this equilibrium. They operate
^ only as dams, "which pile up the water of a stream above
its natural level, but cannot prevent its overflow.
Thus, although they may from time to time alter in
relation to each other, as the circumstances which deter-
mine relative levels change, yet it is evident that wages
in all strata must ultimately depend upon wages in the
lowest and widest stratum — the general rate of wages
rising or falling as these rise or fall.
Now, the primary and fundamental occupations, uppn
which, so to speak, all others are built up, are evidently
those which procure wealth directly from nature; hence
the law of wages in them must be the general law of
wages. And, as wages in such occupations clearly de-
pend upon what labor can produce at the lowest point
of natural productiveness to which it is habitually ap-
plied; therefore, wages generally depend upon the margin
of cultivation, or; to put it more exactly, upon the high-
est point of natural productiveness to which labor is
free to apply itself without the payment of rent.
So obvious is this law that it is often apprehended
without being recognized. It is frequently, said of such
countries as California and Nevada that cheap labor
would enormously aid their development, as it would en-
able the working of the poorer but most extensive .
deposits of ore. A relation between low wages and a
low point of production is perceived by those who talk
in this way, but they invert cause and effect. It is not
low wages which, will cause the working of low-grade
ore, but the extension of production to the lower point
which will diminish wages. If wages could be arbi-
trarily forced down, as has sometimes been attempted
by statute, the poorer mines would not be worked so
long as richer mines could be worked. But if the mar-
gin of production were arbitrarily forced down, as it
Chap. VJ. 'WAGES AND THE LA'W OP "WAGES 213
might be, were the superior natural opportunities in the
ownership of those who chose rather to wait for future
increase of value than to permit them to be used now,
wages would necessarily fall.
The demonstration is complete. The law of wages
we have thus obtained is that which we previously
obtained as the corollary of the law of rent,^ and it
completely harmonizes with the law of interest. It
is, that:
Wages depend upon the margin of production, or upon
the produce which labor can. obtain at the highest point
of natural productiveness open to it without the pay-
ment of rent.
This law of wages accords with and explains uni-
versal /acts that without its apprehension seem un-
related and contradictory. It shows that:
Where land is free and labor is unassisted by capital,
the whole produce will go to labor as wages.
Where land is free and labor is assisted by capital,
wages will consist of the whole produce, less that part
necessary to induce the storing up of labor as capital.
Where land is subject to ownership and rent arises,
wages will be fixed by what labor could secure from the
highest natural opportunities open to it without the
payment- of rent. ■ /
Where natural opportunities are all monopolized,
wages may be forced by the competition among labor-
• ers to the minimum at which laborers will consent to
reproduce.
This necessary minimmn of wages (which by Smith
and Ricardo is denominated the point of “natural
wages,”- and by Mill supposed to regulate wages, which
will be higher or lower as the working classes consent
to reproduce- at a higher or lower standard of comfort)
is, however, included in the law of wages as previously
214
the laws of DISTRIBUTION"
Booh in.
stated, as it is evident that the margin of production
cannot fall below that point at which enough will be
left as wages to secure the maintenance of labor.
Like Ricardo’s law of rent, of which it is the corollary;
this law of wages carries with it its. own proof and be-
comes self-evident by mere statement. For it is but an
application of the central truth that is the foundation of
economic reasoning— that men will seek to satisfy their
desires with the least exertion. The average man will
not work for an employer for less, all things considered,
than he can earn by working for himself; nor yet will
he work for himself for less than he can earn by work-
ing for an employer, and hence the return which labor
can secure from such natural opportunities as are .free
to it must fix the w’ages which labor everywhere gets.
That is to say, the line of rent is the necessary measure
of the line of wages. In fact, the accepted law of rent
depends for its recognition upon a previous, though in
many cases it seems to be an unconscious, acceptance
of this law of wages. What makes it evident that land
of a particular quality will yield as rent the surplus of
its produce over that of the least productive land in use,
is the apprehension of, the fact that the owner of the
higher quality of land can procure the labor to work
his land by the payment of what that labor could pro-
duce if exerted upon land of the poorer quality.
In its simpler manifestations, this law of wages is
recognized by people who do not trouble themselves,
about political, economy, just as the fact that a heavy
body would fall to the earth was long recognized by
those who never thouglit of the law of gi’avitation. , It
does not require a philosopher to see .that if in any
country natural opportunities were thrown open which
would enable laborers to make for themselves wages
higher than the lowest now paid, the general rate of,'
wages would rise; while the most ignorant and stupid
Chap. VI. WAGES AND THE LAW- OF WAGES 215
of the placer miners of early California knew that a* the
placers gave out or were monopolized, wages must fall.
It requires no fine-spun theory to explain why wages
are so high relatively to production in new countries
where land is yet unmonopolized. The cause is on the
surface. One man will not work for another for less
than his labor will realty yield, when he can go upon
the next quarter section and take up a farm for him-
self. It is only as land becomes monopolized and these
natural opportunities are shut off from labor, that
laborers are obliged to compete with each’ other for
employment, and it becomes possible for the farmer to
hire hands to do his work while he maintains himself
on the difference between what their labor produces
and what he pays them for it.
Adam Smith himself saw the cause of high wages
where land was yet open to settlement, though he failed
to appreciate the importance and connection of the fact.
In treating of the Causes of the Prosperity of New
Colonies (Chapter VII, Book IV, "Wealth of Na-
tions”) he says:
• • \
- “Every colonist gets more land than he can possibly cultivate.
He has no rent and scarce any taxes to pay. * * He is eager,
therefore, to collect laborers from every quarter and to pay
them the most liberal wages. But these liberal wages, joined
to the plenty and cheapness of land, soon make these laborers
leave him in order to become landlords themselves, and to
reward with equal liberality other laborers who soon leave them
for the same reason they left their first masters.”
This chapter contains numerous expressions which,
like the opening sentence in the chapter on The Wages
of Labor, show that Adam Smith failed to appreciate
the true laws of the distribution of wealth only because
he turned away from the more primitive forms of so-
ciety to look for first principles amid complex social
manifestations, where he was blinded by a pre-accepted
216
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION .
Book III.
theory of the functions of capital, and, as it seems to
me, by a vague acceptance of the doctrine which, two
years after his death, was formulated by Malthus,
And it is impossible to read the works of the econo-
mists who since the time of Smith have endeavored to
build up and elucidate the science of political economy
without seeing how, over and over again, they stumble
oyer the law of wages without once recognizing it. Yet,
^rif it were a dog it would bite them!” Indeed, it is
diflBcult to resist the impression that some of them really
saw this law of "wages, but, fearful of the practical con-
clusions to which it would lead, preferred to ignore and
cover it up, rather than use it as the key to problems
which without it are so perplexing. A great truth to
an age which has rejected and trampled on it, is not a
word of peace, but a sword!
Perhaps it may be well to remind the reader, before
closing this chapter, of what has been before stated —
that I am using the word wages not in the sense of a
quantity, but in the sense of a proportion. When I say
that wages fall as rent rises, I do not mean that the
quantity of wealth obtained. by laborers as wages is
necessarily less, but that the proportion which it bears*
to the whole produce is necessarily less. The propor-
tion may diminish while the quantity remains the same
or even increases. If the margin of cultivation descends
from the productive point which we will call 25, to the
productive point we will call 20, the rent of all lands
that before paid rent will increase by this difference,
and the proportion of the whole produce which goes
to laborers as wages will to the same extent diminish j
but if, in the meantime, the advance of the arts or
the economies that become possible with greater popula-
tion have, so increased the productive power of labor
that at 20 the same exertion will produce as much wealth
as before at 25, laborers will get as wages as great a
• Chap. VI. WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES 217
quantity as before, and. the relative fall of wages will
not be noticeable in any diminution of the necessaries
or comforts of the laborer, but only in* the increased
value of land and the greater incomes and more lavish
. expenditure of the rent-receiving class.
CHAPTER VII
THE CORRELATION AND CO-ORDINATION OF THESE LA'V7S
The conclusions we have reached as to the laws which
govern the distribution of wealth recast a large and
most important part of the science of political economy,
as at present taught, overthrowing some of ' its most
highly elaborated theories and shedding a new’’ light on
some of its most important problems. Yet, in doing
this, no disputable ground has been occupied; not a
single fundamental principle advanced that is not . al-
ready recognized. '
The law of interest and the law of wages which we
have substituted for those now taught are necessary
deductions from the great law which alone makes any
science of political economy possible — the all-compel-
ling law that is as inseparable from the human mind as
attraction is inseparable from matter, and without which
it w'’Oiild be impossible to previse or calculate upon any
human action, the most trivial or the most important.
This fundamental law, that men seek to gratify their
desires with the least exertion, becomes, when viewed
in its relation to one of the factors of production, the
law of rent; in relation to another, the law of interest;
and in relation to a third, the law of wages. And in
accepting the law of rent, wdiich, since "the time of
Ricardo, has been accepted by every economist of
standing, and which, like a geometrical ' axiom, has but
to he understood to compel assent, the law of interest
and law of wages, as I have stated them, are inferen-
218
Chap. VII. CORRELATION AND CO-ORDINATION OP LAWS 219
tially accepted, as its necessary sequences. In fact, it
is only relatively that they can be called sequences,' as
in the recognition of the law of rent they too must be
recognized. For on what depends the recognition of the
law of rent? Evidently upon the recognition of the
fact that the effect of competition is to prevent the re-
turn to labor and capital being anywhere greater than
upon the poorest land in use. It is in seeing this that
we see that the owner of land will be able to claim as
rent all of its produce which exceeds what. would be
yielded to an equal application of labor and capital’ on
the poorest land in use.
The harmony and correlation of the laws of distribu-
tion as we have now apprehended them are in striking
contrast with the want of harmony which characterizes
these laws as presented by the current political econ-
omy. Let us state them side by side:
The Current Statement
Rent depends on the mar-
gin of cultivation, rising
as it ialls and falling as
it rises.
Wages depend upon the
ratio between the num-
ber of laborers and the
amount of capital de-
voted to their employ-
ment. '
Interest depends upon
the equation between
the supply of and de-
naand for capital; or, as
is stated of profits, upon
wages (or - the cost of
labor), rising as wages
fall, and falling as wages
rise.
The True Statement
Rent depends on the mar-
gin of cultivation, rising
as it falls and falling as
it rises.
"Wages depend on the mar-
gin of _ cultivation, falb
ing as it falls and rising
as it rises.
Interest (its ratio with
wages being fixed by the
net power of increase
which attaches to cap-
ital) _ depends on the
margin of cultivation,
falling as it falls and
rising as it rises.
220
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION
Book in.
In the current statement the laws of distribution have
no common center, no mutual relation; they are not
the correlating divisions of a whole, but measures of
different ^ qualities. In the statement we have given,
they spring from one point, support and supplement
each other, and form the correlating divisions of a com-
plete whole.
CHAPTER VIII
THE STATICS OF THE PROBLEM THUS EXPLAINED
We have now obtained a clear, simple, and consistent
theory of the distribution of wealth, which accords with
first principles and existing facts, and which, when
understood, will commend itself as self-evident.
Before working out this theory, I have deemed it
necessary to show conclusively the insufficiency of cur-
rent theories; for, in thought, as in action, the majority
of men do but follow their leaders, and a theory of
wages which has not merely the support of the highest
names, but is firmly rooted in common opinions and
prejudices, will, until it has been proved untenable, pre-
vent any other theory from being even considered, just
as the theory that the earth was the center of the uni-
verse prevented any consideration of the theory that
it revolves on its own axis and circles round the sun,
until it was clearly shov/n that the apparent movements
of the heavenly bodies could not be explained in ac-
cordance with the theory of the fixity of the earth.
There is in truth a marked resemblance between the
science of political economy, as at present taught, and
the science of astronomy, as taught previous to the
recognition of the Copernican theory. The devices by
which the current political economy endeavors to ex-
plain the social phenomena that are now forcing them-
selves upon the attention of the civilized world may
Well be compared to the elaborate system of cycles and.
enicycles constructed by the learned to explain th^‘
221
222
THE LATTS OP DISTRIBUTION
Booh III
celestial phenomena in a manner according with the
dogmas of authority and the rude impressions and
prejudices of the unlearned. And, just as the observa-
tions which showed that this theory of cycles and epi-
cycles could not e:qDlain all the phenomena of the
heavens cleared the way for the consideration of the
simpler theory that supplanted it, so will a recognition
of the inadequacy of the current theories to account for
social phenomena clear the way for the consideration of
a theory that will gi\'’e to political economy all the sim-
plicity and harmony which the Copemican theory gave
to the science of astronomy.
But at this point the parallel ceases. That “the fixed
and steadfast earth” should- be really whirling through
space with inconceivable velocity is repugnant to the
first apprehensions of men in 'every state and situation;
but the truth I wish to make clear is naturally per-^
ceived, and has been recognized in the infancy of every
people, being obscured only by the complexities of the
civilized state, the warpings of selfish interests, and the
false direction which the speculations of the learned
have taken. To recognize it, we have but to come back
to first principles and heed simple perceptions. Nothing
can be clearer than the proposition that the failure of
wages to increase with increasing productive power is
due to the increase of rent. ^ •
Three things unite to production — labor, capital, and
land.
Three parties divide the produce— the - laborer, the
capitalist, and the land owner.
If, with an increase of production the laborer gets no
more and the capitalist ho more, it is a necessary infer-
ence that the land owner reaps the whole gain.
And the facts agree- with the inference. Though
neither wages nor interest anywhere increase as material
progress goes on, yet the invariable - accompaniment and
Chap. VIII. STATICS OF THE PROBLEM EXPLAINED 223
mark of material progress is the increase of rent — ^the
rise, of land values.
The increase of rent explains why wages and interest
_do not increase. The cause which gives to the , land
holder is the' cause which denies to the laborer and capi-
talist. That wages and interest are higher in new than
in old countries is not, as the standard economists say,
because nature makes a greater return to the applica-
tion of- labor and capital, but because land is cheaper,
and, therefore, as a smaller proportion of the return is
taken by rent, labor and capital can keep for their
■share a larger proportion of what nature does return.
It is not the total produce, but the net produce, -after
rent has been taken from it, that determines what can
be divided as wages and interest. Hence, the rate of
wages and interest is everywhere fixed, not so much by
the productiveness of labor as by the value of land.
Wherever the value of land is relatively low, wages
and interest are relatively high; wherever land is rela'
tively high, wages and interest are relatively low.
if production had not passed the simple stage in
which all labor is directly applied to the land and all
wages are paid in its produce, the fact that when the
land owner takes a larger portion the laborer must put
up with a smaller portion could, not be lost sight of.
But the complexities of pi'oduction in the civilized
state, in which so great a part is borne by exchange,
and so much labor is bestowed upon , materials after
they have been separated from the land, though they
may to the unthinking disguise, do not alter the fact
that all production is still the union of the two factors,
land and labor, and that rent (the share of the land
holder) cannot be increased except at the expense of
wages (the share of the laborer) and interest (the share
of capital). Just as the portion of the crop, which in
the simpler forms of industrial organization the owner
224
the laws of distribution
Booh III.
>f agricultural land receives at the end of the harvest
as his rent, lessens the amount left to the cultivator as
wages and interest, so does the rental of land on which
a manufacturing or commercial city is built lessen the
amount which can be divided as wages and interest
between the laborer and capital there engaged in the
production and exchange of wealth.
In short, the value of land depending wholly upon
the power which its ownership gives of appropriating
wealth created by labor, the increase of land values
is always at the expense of the value of labor. And,
hence, that the increase of productive power does not
increase wages, is because it does increase the value of
land. Rent swallows up the whole gain and pauperism
accompanies progress.
It is unnecessary to refer to facts. They will suggest
themselves to the reader. It is the general fact, observ-
able everywhere, that as the value of land increases, so
does the contrast between wealth and want appear. It
is the universal fact, that where the value of land is
highest, civilization exhibits the greatest luxm’y side by
side with the most piteous destitution. To see human
beings in the most abject, the most helpless and hope-
less condition, you must go, not to the unfenced prairies
and the log cabins of new clearings in the backwoods,
where man single-handed is commencing the struggle
with nature, and land is yet worth nothing, but to the
great cities, where the ownership of a little patch of
ground is a fortune.
BOOK IV
EFFECT OF MATERIAL PROGRESS UPON THE
DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH
fiTT|4'PT^,p, I. THE DYNAMICS OF THE PROBLEM YET TO SEER
II. ^effect OF INCREASE OF POPULATION UPON THE
distribution OP WEALTH
CHAPTER III. EFFECT OF IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS UPON ■
THE DISTRIBUTTON OF WE.^TH
O.TT/^ypFiRr IV. ^EFFECT OF THE EXPECTATION RAISED BY MA<
TERIAL PROGRESS
Hitherto, it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions
yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.—
John Stuart Mill.
Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers.
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west —
But the young, young children, O, my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!
They are weeping in the playtime of the others.
In the country of the free.
— Mrs. Browning,
CHAPTER I
THE DYNAMICb OF THE PROBLEM YET TO SEEK
In identifying rent as the receiver of the increased
production which material progress gives, but which
labor fails to obtain; in seeing that the antagonism of
interests -is not between labor and capital, as is popu-
larly believed, but is in reality between labor and
capital on the one side and land ownership on the
other, we have reached a conclusion that has most im-
portant practical bearings. But it is not worth while
to dwell on them now, for we have not yet fully solved
the problem which was at the outset proposed. To say
that wages remain low because rent advances is like
saying that a steamboat moves because its wheels turn
around. The further question is. What causes rent to
advance? What is the force or necessity that, as pro-
ductive power increases, distributes a greater and
greater proportion of the produce as rent?
The only cause pointed out by Ricardo as advancing '
rent is the increase of population, which by requiring
larger supplies of food necessitates the extension of
cultivation to inferior lands, or to points of inferior pro-
duction on the same lands, and in current works oi
other authors attention is so exclusively directed to the
extension of production from superior to inferior lands
as the cause of advancing rents that Mr. Carey (fol-
lowed by Professor Perry and others) has , imagined
that he has overthrown the Ricardian theory of rent
228
EFFECTS OP MATERIAL PROGRESS
Book IV,
by denying that the progi'ess of agriculture is from bet-
ter to worse lands.*
Now, while it is unquestionably true that the increas-
ing pressure of population which compels a resort to
inferior points of production will raise rents, and does
raise rents, I do not think that all the deductions com-
monly made from this principle are valid, nor yet that
it fully accounts for the increase of rent as material
progress goes on. There are evidently other causes
which conspire to raise rent, but which seem to have
been whollj'’ or partially hidden by the erroneous views
as to the functions of capital and genesis of wages
which have been current. To see what these are, and
how they operate, let us trace the effect of material
progress upon the distribution of wealth.
The changes which constitute or contribute to ma-
terial progress are three: (1) increase in population;
(2) improvements in the arts of production, and ex-
change; and (3) improvements in knowledge, education,
government, police, manners, and morals, so far as they
increase the power of producing wealth. .Material
*As to this, it may be worth while to say; (1) That the
general fact, as shown by the progress of agriculture in the
newer States of the Union and by the character of the land left
out of cultivation in the older, is that the course of cultivation
is from the better to the worse qualities of land. (2) That,
whether the course of production be from the absolutely better
to the absolutely worse lands or the reverse (and there is much
to indicate that better or worse in this connection merely
relates to our knowledge, and that future advances may discover
compensating qualities in portions of the earth now esteemed
most sterile), it is always, and from the nature of the human
mind, must always tend to be, from land under existing condi-
tions deemed better, to land under existing conditions deemed
worse. (3) That Ricardo’s law of rent does not depend upon
the direction of the extension of cultivation, but upon the propo-
sition that if land of a certain quality will yield something,
land of a better quality will yield more.
Chap. 1. DYNAMICS OF THE PROBLEM YET TO SEEK 229
progress, as commonly understood, consists of these
three elements or directions of progression, in all of
which the progressive nations have for some time past
been advancing, though in different degrees. As, con-
sidered in the light of material forces or econoniies, the
increase of knowledge, the betterment of government,
etc., have the same effect as improvements in the arts,
it will not be necessary in this view to consider them
separately. What bearing intellectual or moral prog-
ress, merely as such, has upon our problem we may
hereafter consider. We are at present dealing with
material progress, to which these things contribute only
as they increase wealth-producing power, and shall see
their effects when we see the effect of improvements in
the arts.
To ascertain the effects of material progress upon
the distribution of wealth, let us, therefore, consider
the effects of increase of population apart from improve-
ment in the arts, and then the effect of improvement in
the arts apart from increase of population.
232
EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS
Book JV.
of production is clearly the result of the increased de-
mand of an increased population. For increased popu-
lation, of itself, and without any advance in the arts,
implies an increase in the productive power of labor..
The labor of 100 men, other things being equal, vull
produce’ much more than one hundred times as much as
the labor ’of one man, and the labor of 1,000 men much
more than ten times as much as the labor of 100 men;
and, so, with every additional pair of hands which in-
creasing population brings, there is a more than pro-
portionate addition to the productive power of labor.
Thus, with an increasing population, there may be a
recourse to lower natural powers of production, not
only without any diminution in the average production
of 'vv'ealth as compared to labor, but without any diminu'
tion at the lowest point. If population be doubled, land
of but 20 productiveness may yield to the same amount
of labor as much as land of 30 productiveness could
before yield. For it must not be forgotten (what often
is forgotten) that the productiveness either of land or
labor is nob to be measured in any one thing, but in all
desired things. A settler and his family may raise as'
much corn on land a hundred miles away from the near-
est habitation as they could raise were their land in the
center of a populous district. But in the populous dis-
trict they could obtain with the same labor as good a
living from much poorer land, or from land of equal
quality could make as good a living after paying a
high rent, because in the midst of a large population
their labor would have become more effective; not,
perhaps, in the production of corn, but in the produc-
tion of wealth generally — or the obtaining of all the
commodities and services which are the real object of
their labor. ■
But even where there is a diminution in the produc-
.tiveness of labor at the lowest poin^that is to say,
ChaTp. II.
INCBEASE OF POPULATION
2yy
where the increasing demand for wealth has driven pro-
duction to a lower point of natural productiveness than
the addition to the power of labor from increasing popu-
lation suffices to make iip for — it does not follow that
the aggregate production, as compared with the aggre-
gate labor, has been lessened.
Let us suppose land of diminishing qualities. The
best would naturally be settled first, and as population
increased production would take in the next lower
quality, and so on. But, as the increase of population,
by permitting greater economies, adds to the effective-
ness of labor, the cause which brought each quality of
land successively into cultivation would at the same
time increase the amount of wealth that the same quan-
tity of labor could produce from it. But it would also
do more than this — it would increase the power of pro-
ducing wealth on all the superior lands already in
cultivation. If the relations of quantity and quality
were such that increasing population added to the ef-
fectiveness of labor faster than it compelled a resort
to less productive qualities of land, though the margin
of cultivation would fall and rent would rise, the mini-
mum return to labor would increase. That is to say,
- though wages as a proportion would fall, wages as a
quantity would rise. The average production of wealth
would increase. If the relations were such that the in-
creasing effectiveness of labor just compensated for the
diminishing productiveness of the land as it was called
into use, the effect of increasing population would be
to increLe rent by lowering the margin of cultivation
without reducing wages as a quantity, and to increase
the average production. If we now suppose population
still increasing, but, between the poorest quality of
land in use and the next lower quality, to be a differ-
ence so great that the increased power of labor which
Comes with the increased population that brings it into
CHAPTER II
THE EFFECT' OF INCREASE OF POPULATION UPON THE
DISTPIBUTION OF WTLILTH
The manner in wliicli increasing population advances
rent, as explained and illustrated in current treatises,
is that the increased demand for subsistence forces pro-
duction to inferior soil or to inferior productive points.
Thus, if, with a given population, the margin of culti-
vation is at 30, all lands of productive power over 30 will
pay rent. If the population be doubled, an additional
suppty is required, which cannot be obtained without
an extension of cultivation that will cause lands to
yield rent that before yielded none. If the extension
be to 20, then all the land between 20 and 30 will yield
rent and have a value, and all land over 30 will yield
increased rent and have increased value.
It is here that the Malthusian doctrine receives from
the current elucidations of the theory of rent the sup-
port of which I spoke when enumerating the causes that
have combined to give that doctrine an almost undis-
puted sway in current thought. According to the
Malthusian theory, the pressure of population against
subsistence becomes progressively harder as population
increases, and although two hands come into the world
with every new mouth, it becomes, to use the language
of John Stuart Mill, harder and harder for the new
hands to supply the new mouths. According to
Ricardo’s theory of rent, rent arises from the difference
in productiveness of the lands in use, and as explained
Chav. II. INCREASE OF POPULATION 23l
by Ricardo and the economists who have followed him.
the advance in rents which, experience shows, accom-
panies increasing population, is caused by the inability
of procuring more food except at a greater cost, which
thus forces the margin of population to lower and lower
points of production, commensurately increasing rent.
Thus the two theories, as I have before explained, are
made to harmonize and blend, the law of rent becoming
but a special application of the more general law pro-
pounded by Malthus, and the advance of rents with
increasing population a demonstration of its resistless
operation. I refer to this incidentally, because it now
lies in our way to see the misapprehension which has
enlisted the doctrine of rent in the support of a theory to
which it in reality gives no countenance. The Mal-
thusian theory has been already disposed of, and the
cumulative disproof which will prevent the recurrence
of a lingering doubt will be given when it is shown,
further on, that the phenomena attributed to the pres-
sure of population against subsistence would, under
existing conditions, manifest themselves were popula-
tion to remain stationary.
The misapprehension to which I now refer, and
which, to a proper understanding of the effect of in-
crease of population upon the distribution of wealth, it
is necessary to clear up, is the presumption, expressed or
implied in all the current reasoning upon the subject of
rent in connection with population, that the recourse to
lower points of production involves a smaller aggregate
produce in proportion to the labor expended; though
that this is not always the case is clearly recognized in >
connection with agricultural improvements, which, to
use the words of Mill, are considered “as a partial re-
laxation of the bonds which confine the increase of popu-
lation.” But it is not involved even where there is na
advance in the arts, and the recourse to lower point?*
232
EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS
Bookjy.
of production is clearly the result of the increased de-
mand of an increased population. For increased popu-
lation, of itself, and without any advance in the arts,
implies an increase in the productive power of labor.
The labor of 100 men, other things being equal, will
produce 'much more than one hundred times as much as
the labor ’of one man, and the labor of 1,000 men much
more than ten times as much as the labor of 100 men;
and, so, with every additional pair of hands which in-
creasing population brings, there is a more than pro-
portionate addition to the productive power of labor.
Thus, with an increasing population, there may be a
recourse to lower natural powers of production, not
only without any diminution in the average production
of wealth as compared to labor, but without any diminu-
tion at the lowest point. If population be doubled, land
of but 20 productiveness may yield to the same amount
of labor as much as land of 30 productiveness could
before yield. For it must not be forgotten (what often
is forgotten) that the productiveness either of land or
labor is not to be measured in any one thing, but in all
desired things. A settler and his family may raise as
much corn on land a hundred miles away from the near-
est habitation as they could raise were their land in the , -
center of a populous district. But in the populous dis-
trict they could obtain with the same labor as good a
living from much poorer land, or from land of equal
quality could make as good a living after paying a ^
high rent, because in the midst of a large population
their labor would have become more effective; not,
perhaps, in the production of corn, but in the produc-
tion of wealth generally — or the obtaining of all the
commodities and services which are the real object of
their labor.
But even where there is a diminution in the produc-
tiveness of labor at the lowest point— that is to say,
Chap. II.
INCREASE OF POPULATION
23a
where the increasing demand for wealth has driven pro-
duction to a lower point of natural productiveness than
the addition to the power of labor froih increasing popu-
lation suffices to make up for — ^it does not follow that
the aggregate production, as compared- with the aggre-
gate labor, has been lessened.
Let us suppose land of diminishing qualities. The
best would naturally be settled first, and as population
increased production would take in the next lower
quality, and so on. But, as the increase of population,
by . permitting greater economies, adds to the effective-
ness of labor, the cause which brought each quality of
land successively into cultivation would at the same
time increase the amount of wealth that the same quan-
tity of labor could produce from it. But it would also
do more than this — it would increase the power of pro-
ducing wealth on all the superior lands already in
cultivation. If the relations of quantity and quality
were such that increasing population added to the ef-
fectiveness of labor faster than it compelled a resort
to less productive qualities of land, though the margin
of cultivation would fall and rent would rise, the mini-
oium return to labor would increase. That is to say,
though wages as a proportion would fall, wages as a
quantity would rise. The average production of wealth
Would increase. If the relations were such that the in-
creasing effectiveness of labor just compensated for the
dirninishing productiveness of the land as it was called
into use, the effect of increasing population would be
to increase rent by lowering the margin of cultivation
without reducing wages as a quantity, and to increase
the average production. If we now suppose population
still increasing, but, between the poorest qualit}'- of
land in use and the ne.xt lower quality, -to be a differ-
ence so great that the increased power of labor which
Comes with the increased population that brings fit into
234
EFFECTS OF AIATERIAL PROGRESS
Book. IV.
cultivation cannot compensate for it — ^the minimum
return to labor will be reduced, and "Rath the rise of
rents, wages will fall, not only as a proportion, but as
a quantit}'’. But unless the descent in the quality of
land is far more precipitous than we can well imagine,
or than, I think, ever exists, the average production
will still be increased, for the increased effectiveness
which comes by reason of the increased population that
compels resort to the inferior quality of land attaches
tc all labor, and the gain on the superior qualifies of
land will more than compensate for the diminished pro-
duction on the quality last brought in. The aggregate
wealth production, as compared with the aggregate ex-
penditure of labor, will be greater, though its distribution
will be more unequal.
Thus, increase of population, as it operates to extend
production to lower natural levels, operates to increase
rent and reduce wages as a proportion, and may or may
not reduce wages as a quantity; while it seldom can, and
probably never does, reduce the aggregate production
of wealth as compared with the aggregate expenditure
of labor, but on the contrary increases, and frequently
largely increases it.
But while the increase of population thus increases
rent by lowering the margin of cultivation, it is a mis-
take to look upon this as the only mode by which rent
advances as population grows. Increasing population
increases rent, without reducing the margin of cultiva- ■
tion; and notwithstanding the dicta of such writers as
McCulloch, who assert that rent would not arise were
there an unbounded extent of equally good land, in-
creases it without reference to the natural qualities of
land, for the increased powers of co-operation and ex-
change which come with increased population are equiva-
lent to — ^nay, I think we can say without metaphor,
that they give — an increased capacity to 'land.
Chap. JI.
INCREASE OP POPULATION
235
I do not mean to saj'- merelj’- that, like an improve*
ment in the methods or tools of production, the increased
power which comes with increased population gives to
the same labor an increased result, which is equivalent
to an increase in the natural powers of land; but that
it brings out a superior power in labor, which is local-
ized on land — which attaches not to labor generall5q but
onty to labor exerted on particular land ; and which thus
inheres in the land as much as any qualities of soil,
climate, mineral deposit, or natural situation, and
passes, as they do, with the possession of the land.
An improvement in the method of cultivation which,
■with the same outlay, will give two crops a year ia
place of one, or an improvement in tools and machinery
which will double the result of labor, will manifestly,
on a particular piece of ground, have the same effect
on the produce as a doubling of the fertility of the land.
But the difference is in this respect — ^the improvement
in method or in tools can be utilized on any land; but
the improvement in fertility can be utilized only on the
particular land to which it applies. Now, in large part,
the increased productiveness of labor which arises from
increased population can be utilized only on particular
land, and on particular land in greatly varying degrees.
Here, let us imagine, is an unbounded savannah,
stretching off in unbroken sameness of grass and flower,
tree and rill, till the traveler tires of the monotony.
Along comes the wagon of the first immigrant. Where
to settle he cannot tell — every acre seems as good as
every other acre. As to wood, as to water, as to fer-
tility, as to situation, there is absolutely no'.choice, and
he is perplexed by the embarrassment of richness. Tired
out with the search for one place that is better than
another, he stops — somewhere,- anywhere — and starts to
make himself a home. The soil is virgin and rich, game
is abundant, the streams flash with the finest trout.
236
EFFECTS OF AIATERIAL PROGRESS
Book JV.
Nature is at her very best. He has what, were he in a
populous district, would make him rich; but he is very
poor. To say notliing of the mental craving, which
would lead him to welcome the sorriest stranger, he
labors under all the material disadvantages of solitude.
He can get no temporarj’- assistance for any work that
requires a greater union of strength than that afforded
by his own faraity, or by such help as he can per-
manently keep. Though he has cattle, he cannot often
have fresh meat, for to get a beefsteak he must kill a
bullock. He must be his ovti blacksmith, wagonmaker,
carpenter, and cobbler — in short, a “jack of all trades
and master of none.” He cannot have his children
schooled, for, to do so, he must himself pay and main-
tain a teacher. Such things as he cannot produce him-
self, he must buy in quantities and keep on hand, or
else go without, for he cannot be constantly leaving his
work and making a long journey to the verge of civili-
zation; and when forced to do so, the getting of a vial >
of medicine or the replacement of a broken auger may
cost him the labor of himself and horses for days.
Under such circumstances, though nature is prolific, the
man is poor. It is an easy matter for him to get enough
to eat; but beyond this, his labor will suffice to satisfy
only the simplest wants in the rudest way.
Soon there comes another immigrant. Although every
quarter section of the boundless plain is as good as every
other quarter section, he is not beset by any embarrass-
ment as to where to settle. ■ Though the land is the same,
there is one place that is clearly better for him than
any other place, and that is where there is already a
settler and he may have a neighbor. He settles by the
side of the first comer, whose condition is at once greatly
improved, and to whom many things are now possible ’
that were before impossible, for two men may help
each other to do things that one man could never do.
^ap.ll. INCREASE OF POPULATION 237
-/Another immigrant comes, and, guided by the same
attraction, settles where there are already two. Another,
and another, until around our first comer there are' a '
, score , of neighbors. Labor has mow an effectiveness
which, in the solitary state, it could not approach. If
heavy work is to be done, the settlers have a log-rolling,
and together ■ accomplish in a day what singly would
require years. When one kills a bullock, the others take
part of it, returning when they kill, and thus they have
fresh meat all the time." Together they hire a school-
master, and the 'Children of each are taught for - a frac-
tional part of what similar teaching would have cost
' the first settler. It becomes a comparatively easy mat- '
ter to send to the nearest town, for some one is always ■
going. . But there is less need for such journeys. A
blacksmith and a wheelvuright soon set up shops, and
- our. settler can have his tools repaired for a small part
of the labor • it formerly cost him. A store is opened
and he can get what he wants as he wants it; a post-
, office, soon added, gives him regular communication
"''^ith the rest of the world. Then come a cobbler, a
carpenter, a harness-maker, a doctor; and a little church
soon arises. Satisfactions become possible that in the
- solitary state were impossible. There are gratifications
^or the social and the intellectual nature — for that part .
of the man that rises above the animal. The power of
sympathy, the sense of companionship, the emulation
of comparison and contrast, open a wider, and fuller,
and ihore varied life. In rejoicing, there are others to
rejoice; in sorrow, the mourners do not mourn alone.
There are husking bees, and apple parings, and quilting
parties. Though the ballroom be unplastered and the
orchestra but a fiddle, the notes of the magician are
yet in the strain, and Cupid dances with the dancers.
At the wedding, there are others to admire and enjoy;
in the house of death, there are watchers; by the open
238 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS Book IV.
grave, stands human sympathy to sustain the mourners.
Occasionally, comes a straggling lecturer to open up
glimpses of the world of science, of literature, or of
art; in election times, come stump speakers, and the
citizen rises to a sense of dignity and power, as the
cause of empires is tried before him in the struggle of
John Doe and Richard Roe for his support and vote.
And, by and by, comes the circus, talked of months
before, and opening to children whose horizon has been
the prairie, all the realms of the imagination — princes
and princesses of fairy tale, mail-clad crusaders and
turbaned Moors, Cinderella’s fairy coach, and the giants
of nursery lore; lions such as crouched before Daniel,
or in circling Roman amphitheater tore the saints of
God; ostriches who recall the sandy deserts; camels such
as stood around when the wicked brethren raised Joseph
from the well and sold him into bondage; elephants
such as crossed the Alps with Hannibal, or felt the
sword of the Maccabees; and glorious music that thrills
and builds in the chambers of the mind ’as rose the
sunny dome of Kubla Khan.
Go to our settler now, and say to him: “You have
so many fruit trees which you planted; so much fenc-
ing, such a well, a barn, a house — in short, you have
by your labor added so much value to this farm. Your
land itself is not quite so good. You have been cropping
it, and by and by it will need manure. I will give you
the full value of all your improvements if you will give
it to me, and go again with your family beyond the
verge of settlement.” He would laugh at you. His
land yields no more wheat or potatoes than before, but
it does yield far more of all the necessaries and com-
forts of life. His labor upon it will bring no heavier
crops, and, we will suppose, no more valuable crops,
but it will bring far more of all the other things for .
which men work. The presence of other settlers— the
Chap. JI.
INCREAS13 OF POPULATION
239
increasB of population — ^has added to the productive-
ness, in these things, of labor bestowed upon it, and
this added productiveness gives it a superiority over
land of equal natural quality where there are as yet no
settlers. If no land remains to be taken up, except such
as is as far removed from population as was our set-
tler’s land when he first went upon it, the value or rent
of this land will be measured by the whole of this added
capability. If, however, as we have supposed, there is
a continuous stretch of equal land, over which popula-
tion is now spreading, it will not be necessary for the
new settler to go into the wilderness, as did the first.
He will settle just beyond the other settlers, and will get
the advantage of proximity to them. The value or rent
of our settler’s land will thus depend on the advantage
which it has, from being at the center of population,
over" that on the verge. In the one case, the margin of
production will remain as before; in the other, the mar'
gin. of production will be raised.^
Population still continues to increase, and as it in-
creases so do the economies which its increase permits^
and which in effect add to the productiveness of the
land. Our first settler’s land, being the center of popu-
lation, the store, the blacksmith s forge, the wheel-
wright’s shop, are set up on it, or on its margin, where
soon arises a village, which rapidly grows into a town,
the center of exchanges for the people of the whole
district. With no greater agricultural productiveness
than it' had at first, this land now begins to develop a
productiveness of a higher kind. To la,bor expended in
raising corn, or wheat, or potatoes, it will yield no more
of those things than at first; but to labor expended in
the subdivided branches of production which require
proximity to other producers, and, especially, to labor
expended in that final part of production, which con-
sists in distribution, it will yieid much larger returns.
240
EFIT3CTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS
Booh IV,
The ivheat-grov/er may go furtfter on, ancf hnd land on
which his labor will produce as much wheat, and nearly
as much wealth; but the artisan, the manufacturer, the
storekeeper, the professional man, find that their labor
expended h'ere, at the center of exchanges, will yield
them much more than if expended even at a little dis-
tance away from it; and this excess of productiveness
for such purposes the land owner can claim just as he
could an excess in its wheat-producing power. And
so our settler is able to sell in building lots a few of his
acres for prices which it would not bring for wheat-
growing if its fertility had been multiplied many times.
With the proceeds, he builds himself a fine house, and
furnishes it handsomely. That is to say, to reduce the
transaction to its lowest terms, the people who wish to
use the land build and furnish the house for him, on
condition that he will let them avail themselves of the
superior productiveness which the increase of popula-
tion has given the land.
Population still keeps on increasing, giving greater
and greater utility to the land, and inore and more
w^ealth to its owner. . The town has grown into a city —
a St. Louis, a Chicago or a San Francisco-^and still it,
grows. Production is here carried on upon a great scale,
with the best machinery and the most favorable facil-
ities ; the division of labor becomes extremely minute,
wonderfully multiplying efficiency; exchanges are of
such volume and rapidity that they are made with the
minimum of friction and loss. Here is the heart, the
brain, of the vast .social organism that has grown up
from the germ of the first settlement; here has developed,
one of the great ganglions of the human world. Hither
run all roads, hither set . all currents, through all the
vast regions round about. Here, if you have anything
to sell, is the market; here, if you have anything to
buy, is the largest and the choicest stock. Here intel-
Chap. ;i. ESrCEEASE OP POPULATION ; 2il
lectual activity is gathered into a focus, and here springs
that stimulus which is born of the collision of mind , with
mind. Here are the great libraries, the storehouses
and granaries of knowledge, the learned professors, the
famous specialists. Here are museums and .art- gal-
leries, collections of philosophical apparatus, and , all
things rare, and valuable, and best of their kind. Here
come great actors, and orators, and singers, from .all
over the world. Here, in short, is a center of human
life, in all its varied manifestations.
So enormous are the advantages which this land now
offers for the application of labor, that instead of one
man with a span of horses scratching over acres, you
may count in places thousands of workers to the acre.
Working tier on tier, on floors raised one above the other,
five,: six, seven and eight stories from the ground, while
underneath the surface of the earth engines are. throb-
bing with pulsations that exert the force of thousands o^
horses.
All these advantages attach to the land; it is on this
land and no other that they can be utilized, lor here is
the center of population — ^the focus of exchanges, the
market place and workshop of the highest forms of
•industry. The productive powers which density of
population has attached to this land are equivalent to
the multiplication of its original fertility by the hun^
dred fold and the thousand fold. And rent, which
measures the difference between this added produc-
tiveness and that of the least productive land in use,
has , increased accordingly. Our ' settler, or whoever
has succeeded to his right to the land, is now a mil-
lionaire. Like another Rip Van Winkle, he may have
lain down and slept; still he is rich — not from anj^thing
he has .done, but from the increase of population.
There are lots from which for every foot of frontage
the owner may draw more than an average mechanic
242
EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS
Book iV.
can earn; there are lots that will sell for more than
would suffice to pave them with gold coin. In the prin-
cipal streets are towering buildings, of granite, marble,
iron, and plate glass, finished in the most expensive
Style, replete with every convenience. Yet they are
not worth as much as the land upon which they rest
— the same land, in nothing changed, which when our
first settler came upon it had no value at all.
That this is the way in which the increase of popu-
lation powerfully acts in increasing rent, whoever, in a
progressive country, will look around him, may see for
himself. The process is going on under his eyes. The
increasing difference in the productiveness of the land
in us.e, which causes an increasing rise in rent, results
not so much from the necessities of increased popula-
tion compelling the resort to inferior land, as from the
increased productiveness which increased population
gives to the lands already in use. The most valuable
lands on the globe, the lands which yield the highest
tent, are not lands of surpassing natural fertility, but
lands to which a surpassing utility has been given by
the increase of population.
The increase of productiveness or utility which in-
erease of population gives to certain lands, in the way
to which I have been calling attention, attaches, as it
Were, to the mere quality of extension. The valuable
quality of land that has become a center of population
is its superficial capacity — it makes no difference
whether it is fertile, alluvial soil like that of Philadel-
phia; rich bottom land like that of New Orleans; a
filled-in marsh like that of St. Petersburg, or a sandy
waste like the greater part of San Francisco.
And wffiere value seems to arise from superior natural
qualities, such as deep water and good anchorage, rich
deposits of coal and iron, or heavy timber, observation
tiso shows that these superior qualities are brought out.
Chap. 11.
INCREASE OF POPULATION
243
rendered tangible, by population. The coal and iron
fields of Pennsylvania, that to-day are worth enormous
sums, were fifty years ago valueless. What is the
efficient cause of the difference? Simply the difference
m population. The coal and iron beds of Wyoming
and Montana, which to-day are valueless, will, in fifty
years from now, be worth millions on millions, simply
because, in the meantime, population will have greatlv
increased.
It is a well provisioned ship, this on which we sail
through space. If the bread and beef above decks seem
to grow scarce, we but open a hatch and there is a new
supply, of which before we never dreamed. And very
great command over the services of others comes to
those who as the hatches are opened are permitted to
say, "This is mine!”
To recapitulate: The effect of increasing population
upon the distribution of wealth is to increase rent and
consequently to diminish the proportion ' of the produce
which goes to capital and labor, in two ways: First
By lowering the margin of. cultivation. Second, By
bringing out in land special capabilities otherwise latent
and by attaching special capabilities to particular lands!
I am disposed to think that the latter mode, to which
little attention has been given by political economists,
IS really the more important But this, in our inquiry
IS not a rnatter of moment. ’
f
CHAPTER III
THE EFFECT OF IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS UPON, THE
DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH
Eliminating improvements in the arts, we have seen
the effects of increase of population upon the distribu-
tion of wealth. Eliminating increase of population, let
us now see what effect improvements in the arts of
production have upon distribution.
We have seen that increase of population increases
rent, rather by increasing the productiveness of labor
than by decreasing it. If it can now be shown that, irre-
spective of the increase of population, the effect of im-
provements in methods of production and exchange is
to increase rent, the disproof of the Malthusian theory
■ — and of all the doctrines derived from or related to it
—will be final and complete, for we shall have accounted
for the tendency of material progress to lower wages
and depress the condition of the lowest class, without ,
recourse to the theory of increasing pressure against
the means of subsistence.
That this is the case will, I think, appear on the
slightest consideration.
The effect of inventions and improvements in the
nroductive arts is to save labor — that is, to enable the
same result to be secured with less labor, or a greater
result with the same labor,
- Now, in a state of society in which the existing powei
of labor served to satisfy all material desires, and there
r'as no possibility of new desires being called forth by
Chap. HI. improvements IN THE. AKTS 245
the opportunity of gratifying them, the effect of -labor-
saving improvements would be simply to reduce the
.amount of labor expended. But such a state of society,
if it can- anywhere be found, which I do not believe,
exists only where the human most nearly 'approaches
the animal. In the state of society called civilized, and
•which in this inquiry we are concerned with, the vefy
reverse is the case. Demand is not a fixed quantity,
that increases only as population increases. In each
individual it rises with '/its power of getting the things
demanded. Man is not an ox, who, when he has eaten
his fill, lies down to chew the cud; he is the daughter
of ihe horse leech, who constantly asks for more.
"When -I get some money,” said Erasmus, "I will .buy
' me some Greek books and afterward some , clothes.”
' The. amount of wealth produced is nowhere commensu-
rate with the desire for wealth, and desire mounts with
every .additional opportunity , for gratification.
This being the case, the effect of labor-saving im-
provements will be to increase the production of wealth.
. Now, - for the production of wealth, two things are
required-T-labor and land. Therefore, the effect of labor-
saving improvements will be, to extend the demand for
land, and wherever the limit of the quality of land in
use is reached, to bring into cultivation lands of less
natural productiveness, or to extend cultivation on the ■
• same lands to a point of lower natural productiveness.
And thus, while the primary effect of labor-saving im-
provements is to increase the power of labor, the sec-
ondary effect is to extend cultivation, and, where this
lowers- the margin of cultivation, to increase rent. Thus,
where land- is entirely appropriated, ■ as in England, or
where it is either appropriated or is capable of appro-
priation as rapidly as it is needed for use, as in. the
United States, the ultimate effect of labor-saving ma-
246
EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS
Book JV,
chinery or improvements is to increase rent without
increasing wages or interest.
It is important that this be fully understood, for it
shows that effects attributed by current theories to in-
crease of population are really due to the progress of
invention, and explains the otherwise perplexing fact
that labor-saving machinery everywhere fails to. bene-
fit laborers.
Yet, to grasp fully this truth, it is necessary to keep
in mind what I have already more than once adverted
to — ^the interchangeability of wealth. I refer to this
again, only because it is so persistently forgotten or
ignored by writers who speak of agricultural production
as though it were to be distinguished from production
in general, and of food or subsistence as though it were
not included in the term wealth.
Let me ask the reader to bear in mind, what has
already been sufficiently illustrated, that the possession
or production of any form of wealth is virtually the
possession or production of any other form of wealth
for which it will exchange — in order that he may clearly
see that it is not merely improvements which effect a
saving in labor directly applied to land that tend to
increase rent, but all improvements that in any way
save labor.
That the labor of any individual is applied exclu-
sively to the production of one form of wealth is solely
the result of the division of labor. The object of labor
on the part of any individual is not the obtainment of
wealth in one particular form, but the obtainment of
wealth .in all the forms that consort with his desires.
A.nd, hence, an improvement which effects a saving in .
the labor required to produce one of the things desired,
Is, in effect, an increase in the power of producing all
the other things. If it take half a man's labor to keep
him in food, and the other half to provide him clothing
Char. III. IMPBOVEMENTS IN THE ARTS 24T
and shelter, an improvement which would increase his
power of producing food would also increase his power
of providing clothing and shelter. If his desires for
more or better food, and for more or better clothing
and .shelter, were equal, an improvement in one depart-
ment of labor would be prcciselj* equivalent to a like im-
provement in the other. If the improvement consisted
m a doubling of the power of his labor in producing
food, lie would give one-third less labor to the pro-
duction of food, and one-third more to the providing of
Nothing and shelter. If the improvement doubled his
power to provide clothing and shelter, he would give one-
third less labor to the production of these things, and
one-third more to the production of food. In either
case, the result would be the same — he would be enabled
'^vith the same labor to get one-third more in quantity
or quality of all the things he desired.
And, so, where production is carried on by the divi-*
?ion of labor between individuals, an . increase in the
power of producing one of the things sought by pro-
duction in the aggregate adds to the power of obtaining
others, and will increase the production of the others, to
an extent determined by the proportion which the sav-
ing of labor bears to the total amount of labor expended,
and by the relative strength of desires. I am unable
to think of any form of wealth, the demand for which
■'^ould not be increased by a saving in the labor required
to produce the others. Hearses and coffins have been
selected as examples of things for which the demand is '
little likely to increase; but this is true only as to
quantity. That increased power of supply would lead
to a demand for more expensive hearses and coffins, no
one can doubt who has noticed how strong is the desire
to show regard for the dead by costly funerals.
Nor is the demand for food limited, as in economic
reasoning is frequently, but erroneously, assumed. Sub- '
248
effects of material progress
Book IV.
sistence is often spoken of as though it were a fixed
quantity; but it is fixed only n having a definite mini-
mum. Less than a certain amount will not keep a
human being alive, and less than a somewhat larger
amount will not keep a human being in good health.
But, above this minimum, the subsistence which a
human being can use may be increased almost indefi-
nitely. Adam Smith says, and Ricardo indorses the
statement, that the desire for food is limited in every
man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach;
but this, manifestly, is true onlj’" in the sense that when
a man’s belly is filled, hunger is satisfied. His demands
for food have no such limit. The stomach of a Louis
XIV, a Louis XV, or a Louis XVI; could not hold or
digest more than the stomach of a French peasant of '
equal stature, yet, while a few rods of ground would
supply the black bread and herbs which constituted
the subsistence of the peasant, it took hundreds of
thousands of acres to supply the demands of the king,
who, besides his own wasteful use of the finest qualities
of food, required immense ■ supplies for his servants,
horses and dogs. And in 'the common facts of daily
life, in the unsatisfied, though perhaps latent, desires
which each one has, we may see how every 'increase in •
the power of producing any form of wealth must result
in an increased demand for land and the direct products
of land. The man who now uses coarse food, and
lives- in a small house, will, as a rule, if his income be
increased, use more' costly food, and , move to . a. larger
house. If he grows richer and richer he will procure
horses, servants, gardens and lavms, his demand for the
use of land constantly increasing with his wealth. In
the city where I write, is a man — but the type of men
everywhere to be found — who used to boil his own beans
and fry his own bacon, but who, now that he has got
rich, maintains - a town house that takes up a whole
Chap. III. IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS 249
block and would answer for a first-class hotel, two or
three country houses with extensive grounds, a large'
stud of racers, a breeding farm, private track, etc. It
certainly takes at least a thousand timesy it ' may be
several thousand times, as much land to supply the de-
mands of this man now as it did when he was poor. .
And, so, every improvement or invention, no matter
what it be, which gives to labor the power of producing
more wealth, causes an increased demand for land and
its direct products, and thus tends to force down the
margin of cultivation, just as would the demand caused
by an increased population. This being the case, every
labor-saving invention, whether it be a steam plow, a
telegraph, an improved process of smelting ores, a per-
fecting printing press, or a sewing machine, has a ten-
dency to increase rent. , . .
Or, to state this truth concisely:
Wealth in all its forms being the product of labor
a,pplied to land or the products of land, any increase in
the power of labor, the demand for wealth being unsat-
isfied, will be utilized in procuring more wealth, and
thus increase the demand for land. ' '
To illustrate this effect of labor-saving machinery
and improvements, let us suppose a country where, as
in all the countries of the civilized world, the land is in
the possession of but a portion of the people. Let us
suppose a -permanent barrier fixed to further increase
of population, either by the enactment and strict en-
forcement of an Herodian law, or from such a change
. in manners and morals as might result from ah exten-
sive circulation of Annie Besant’s pamphlets. Let the
margin of cultivation, or production, be represented by
20. Thus land or other natural opportunities which,
from the application of labor and capital, will yield a
return of 20,. will just give the ordinary rate of wages
250
EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS
Book IV.
and interest, without yielding any rent; while al] Jands
yielding to equal applications of labor and capital more
than 20 will 5’’ield the excess as rent. Population re-
maining fixed, let there be made inventions and improve-
ments which •will reduce by one-tenth the expenditure
of labor and capital necessary to produce the same
amount of wealth. Now, either one-tenth of the labor
and capital may be freed, and production remain the
same as before; or the same amount of labor and capital
may be employed, and production be correspondingly
increased. But the industrial organization, as in all
civilized countries, is such that labor and capital, and
especially labor, must press for employment on any
terms — ^the industrial organization is such that mere
laborers are not in a position to demand their fair share
in the new adjustment, and that any reduction in the
application of labor to production will, at first, at least,
take the form, not of giving each laborer the same
amount of produce for less work, but of throwing some
of the laborers out of work and giving them none of the
produce. Now, owing to the increased efBciency of
labor secured by the new improvements, as great a
return can be secured at the point of natural produc-
tiveness represented by 18, as before at 20. Thus, the
■unsatisfi.ed desire for wealth, the competition of labor
■and capital for employment, would insure the exten-
sion of the margin of production, we will say to 18, and
thus rent would be increased by the difference between
18 and 20, while wages and interest, in quantity, would
!be no more than before, and, in proportion to the whole
produce, would be less. There would be a greater pro--
duction of wealth, but land owners would get the whole
benefit, subject to temporary deductions, which will be
hereafter stated.
If invention and improvement still go on, the efficiency
of labor will be still further increased, and the amount
Cftap. III.
niPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS
251
of labor and capital necessary to produce a given result
further diminished. The same causes will lead to the
utilization of this new gain in productive power for the
production of more wealth; the margin of cultivation
will be again extended, and rent will increase, both in
proportion and amount, without any increase in wages
and interest. And, so, as invention and improvement
go on,, constantly adding to the efficiency of labor, the
margin of production will be pushed lower and lower^
and rent constantly increased, though population should
remain stationary.
I do not mean to say that the lowering of the margin
of production would always exactly correspond witli the
increase in productive power, any more than I 'mean to
say that the process would be one of clearly defined
steps. Whether, in any particular case, the lowering of
the, margin of production lags behind or exceeds the;
increase in productive power, will depend, I conceive^,
upon what may be called the area of productiveness
that can be utilized before cultivation is forced to the
uext lowest point. For instance, if the margin of cul-
tivation be at 20, improvements which enable the same
produce to be obtained with one-tenth less capital and
labor will not carry the margin to 18, if the area having
a productiveness of 19 is sufficient to employ all the
labor .and capital displaced from the cultivation of the
superior lands. In this case, the margin of cultivation
"w^ould rest at 19, and rents would be increased by the
difference between 19 and 20, and wages and interest
by the difference between 18 and 19. But if, with the
same increase in productive power the area of produc-
tiveness between 20 and 18 should not be sufficient to
employ all the displaced labor and capital, the margin
of cultivation must, if the same amount of labor and
capital press for employment, be carried lower than 18. .
this case, rent would gain more than the increase in
252
EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS
Book IV
the product, and wages and interest would be less than
before the improvements which increased productive
power.
Nor is it precisely true that the labor set free by each
improvement will all be driven to seek employment in
the production of more wealth. The increased power of
satisfaction, which each fresh improvement gives to a
certain portion of the community, will be utilized in
demanding leisure or services, as well as in demanding
wealth. Some laborers will, therefore, become idlers
and some wdll pass from the ranks of productive to those
of unproductive laborers — the proportion of which, as
observation shows, tends to increase with the progress
of society.
But, as I shall presently refer to a cause, as yet un-
considered, which constantly tends to lower the margin
of cultivation, to steady the advance of rent, and even
carry it beyond the proportion that would be fixed by
the actual margin of cultivation, it is not worth while
to take into account these perturbations in the down-
ward movement of the margin of cultivation and the
upward movement of rent. All I wish to make clear
is that, without any increase in population, the progress
of invention constantly tends to give a larger propor-
tion of the produce to the. owners of land, and a smaller
and smaller proportion to labor and capital.
And, as we can assign, no limits to the progress of
invention, neither can we assign, any limits to the in-
crease of rent, short of the whole produce. For, if labor-
saving inventions went .on until perfection was attained,
and the necessity of labor in the production of wealth
was entirely done away with, then everything that the
earth could yield could be obtained without labor, and
the margin of cultivation would be extended to zero,
."Wages would be nothing, and interest would be nothing,
while rent would take everything. For the owners of
IV«w!909p«SCH5B
Chav. III. IMPROVEMENTS IN THE AETS ' . 2^
^ tlie land, being enabled- without labor to obtain all tl;
wealth that could be procured from nature, there woul
be no use for either labor or capital, and no possibl
. way in which either could compel any share of th
wealth produced. And no matter how small populatio
might be, if anybody but the land owners continued t
exist, it would be at the whim or by the mercy of th
land owners — ^they would be maintained either for th
amusement of the land owners, or, as paupers, by thei
bounty,
- This point, of the absolute perfection of labof-savinj
inventions, may seem very remote, if not impossible' o
attainment; but it is a point toward which the marci
of invention is every daiy more strongly tending. Anc
in the thinning out of population in the agricultura
districts of Great Britain, where small farms are beinj
converted into larger ones, and in the great machine-
worked wheat-fields of California and Dakota, when
one may ride for miles and miles through waving grair
Without seeing a human habitation, there are already
• suggestions of the final goal toward which the whole
civilized world is hastening. The steam plow and the
reaping machine are creating in the modern world lati-
fundia of the -same kind that the influx of slaves from
foreign wars 'created in ancient Italy. And to many a
poor fellow as he is shoved out of his accustomed place
and .forced to move on — as the Roman farmers were
forced to ioin the proletariat of the great city, or sell
their blood for bread in the ranks of the legions— -it
seems as though these labor-saving inventions were in
. themselves a curse, and we hear men talking of work,
as though the wearying strain of the muscles were, in
itself, a thing to be desired.
In what has preceded, I have, of course, spoken of
inventions and improvements when generally diffused.
It is hardly. necessary to say that as long as an inven-
254
Bookn
effects op material progress
tion or an improvement is used by so few that the;
derive a special advantage from it, it does not, to thi
extent of this special advantage, affect the general dis'
tribution of wealth. So, in regard to the limited monop-
olies created by patent laws, or by the causes which
give the same character to railroad and telegraph lines,
etc. Although generally mistaken for profits of capital,
the special profits thus arising are really the returnb
of monopol}’’, as has been explained in a previous chap-
ter, and, to the extent that they subtract from the bene-
fits of an improvement, do not primarily affect general
distribution. For instance, the benefits of a railroad
or similar improvement in cheapening transportation
are diffused or monopoli2;ed, as its charges are reduced
to a rate which will yield ordinary interest on the
capital invested, or kept up to a point which will yield
an extraordinary return, or cover the stealing of the
constructors or directors. And, as is well known, the
rise in rent or land values corresponds with the reduc-
tion in the charges.
As has before been said, in the improvements which
advance rent are not only to be included the improve-
ments which directly increase productive power, but also
such improvements in government, manners, and morals
as indirectly increase it. - Considered as material forces,
the effect of all these is to increase productive power,
and, like improvements in the productive arts, their
benefit is ultimately monopolized by the possessors of
the land. A notable instance of this is to be found in
the abolition of protection by England. Free trade has
enormously increased the wealth of Great Britain, with-
out lessening pauperism. It has simply increased rent.
And if the corrupt governments of our great American
cities were to be made models of purity and economy,
the effect would simply be to increase the value of land,
Bot to raise either wages or interest. . ,
CHAPTER IV
EFFECT OF THE EXPECTATION RAISED BY MATERIAL
PROGRESS
We have now seen that while advancing population
tends to advance rent, so all the causes that in a pro-
pessive state of society operate to increase the produc-
tive power of labor tend, also, to advance rent, and not
to advance wages or interest. The increased produc-
tion of wealth goes ultimately to the owners of land 'in
increased rent; and, although, as improvement goes
on, advantages may accrue to individuals not land hold-
ers, which concentrate in their hands considerable por-
tions of the increased produce, yet there is in all this
improvement nothing which tends to increase the general
return either to labor or to capital.
^ But there is a cause, not yet adverted to, which must
oe taken into consideration fully to explain the influence
of material progress upon the distribution of wealth.
That cause is the confident expectation of the future
enhancement of land values, which arises in all pro-
^essive countries from the steady increase of rent and
which leads to speculation, or the holding of land for a
higher price than it would then otherwise bring.
We have hitherto assumed, as is generally assumed in
elucidations of the theory of rent, that the actual mar-
gin of cultivation always coincides with what may be
termed the necessary margin of cultivation — ^that is to
say, we have assumed that cultivation extends to less
productive points only as it becomes necessary from
256
EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS
Booh IV.
the fact that natural opportunities are at the more pro-
, ductive points fullj- utilized.
This, probably, is the case in stationary or very slowly
progressing communities, but in rapidly progressing com-
munities, where the swdft and steady increase of rent
gives confidence to calculations of further increase, it
is not the case. In such communities, the confident
e.xpectation of increased prices produces, to a greater
or less extent, the effects of a combination among land
holders, and tends to the withholding of land from use,
in expectation of higher prices, thus forcing the margin
of cultivation farther than required by the necessities
of production.
This cause must operate to some extent in all pro-
gressive communities, though in such countries as Eng-
land, where the tenant system prevails in agriculture,
it may be shown more in the selling price of land than
in the agricultural margin of cultivation, or actual rent.
But in communities like the United States, where the
user of land generally prefers, if he can, to own it, and
where there is a gi’eat extent of land to overrun, it
operates with enormous power.
" The immense area over which the population of the
United States is scattered shows this. The man who
sets out from the Eastern seaboard in search of the mar-
gin of cultivation, where he may obtain land without
pajang rent, must, like the man who swam the river to
get a drink, pass for long distances through half-tilled
farms, and traver.se vast areas of virgin soil, before he
reaches the point where land can be had free of rent — •
i. e., by homestead entry or pre-emption. He (and, with
him, the margin of ■ cultivation) is forced so much
farther than be otherwise need have gone, by the specu-
lation which is holding these unused lands in expectation
of increased value in the future. And when he settles.,
he will, in his turn, take up, if he can, more land than
Chav. IV.
•EXPECTATION RAISED
257
he can use, in ihe belief that’ it will soon become valu-
able; and so those who follow him are again forced
farther on than the necessities of production require
carrying the margin of cultivation to still less produc-
ti've, because still more remote points.
^ The same thing may be seen in every rapidly growing
City. If the land of superior quality as to location were
always fully used before land of inferior quality were
resorted to, no vacant lots would be left as a city ex-
tended, nor would we find miserable shanties in the
midst of costly buildings. These lots, some of them
extremely valuable, are withheld from use, or from the-
full use to which they might be put, because their ,
owners, not being able or not wishing to improve them;
prefer, in expectation of the advance of land values, to
hold them for a higher rate than could now be obtained
from those willing to improve them. And, in conse-
quence of this land being withheld from use, or from
the full use of which it is capable, the margin of the'
city, is pushed away so much farther from the center!
But when we reach the limits of the growing city
the actual margin of building, which corresponds to the
margin of cultivation in agriculture — ^we shall not find
the land purchasable at its value for agricultural pur-
poses, as it would be were rent determined simply by
present requirements; but we shall find that for a long
distance beyond the city, land bears a speculative value
based upon the belief that it will be required in the
futiu-e for urban purposes, and that to reach the point
at which land can be purchased at a price not based
upon urban rent, we must go verj^ far beyond the actual
margin of urban use.
, Or, to take another case of a different land, instances
Similar to which may doubtless be found in everj’’ local-
ly. There is in Marin County, within easy access of
fcan Francisco, a fine belt of redwood timber. Nat-
?58 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS Book IV.
urally, this would be first used, before re'sorting for the
supply of the San Francisco market to timber lands at
a much greater distance. But it yet remains uncut,
and lumber procured many miles beyond is daily hauled
past it on the railroad, because its owner prefers to
hold for the greater price it will bring in the future.
Thus, by the withholding from use of this body of tim-
ber, the margin of production of redwood is forced so
much farther up and down the Coast Range, That
mineral land, when reduced to private ovmership, is
frequently withheld from use while poorer deposits are
worked, is well known, and in new States it is common
to find individuals who are called “land poor” — ^that is,
who remain poor, sometimes almost to deprivation, be-
cause they insist on holding land, which they themselves
cannot use, at prices at which no one else can profitably
use it.
To recur now to the illustration we made use of in the
preceding chapter: With the margin of cultivation
standing at 20, an increase in the power of production
takes place, which renders the same result obtainable
with one-tenth less labor. For reasons before stated,
the margin of production must now be forced down, and
if it rests at 18, the return to labor and capital wiU
be the same as before, when the margin stood at 20,
Whether it will be forced to 18 or be forced lower
depends upon what I have called the area of produc-
tiveness which intervenes between 20 and 18, But if the
confident expectation of a further increase of rente
leads the land owners to demand 3 rent for 20 land,
2 for 19, and 1 for 18 land, and to vuthhold their land
from use until these terms are complied with, the area
of productiveness may be so reduced that the margin
of cultivation must fall to 17 or even lower; and thus,
as the result -of the increase in the efficiency of labor,
laborers would get less than before, while interest would
o^p. IV.
EXrECTATlOX IIAISKD
259
be proportionately rcrlucccl, and rent would increase in
greater ratio tlian the increase in productive power.
Whether we fornnilatc it ns an extension of the margin
of production, or as a oarn-ing of the rent line bcj'ond
the margin of production, the influence of speculation
in land in increasing rent is a great fact which cannot
be ignored in any complete theory of the distribution of
vrealth in progressive countries. It is the force, evolved
by material progress, whicli tends constantly to increase
rent in a greater r.atio than progress increases produc-
tion, and thus constantly tends, as material progress
goes on and productive power increases, to reduce wages,
not merely relatively, but absolutely. It is this expan-
sive force which, operating with great power in new
countries, brings to them, seemingly long before their
time, the .social diseases of older countries; produces
“tramps” on virgin acres, and breeds paupers on half-
tilled soil.
In short, the general and steady advance in land
values in a progressive community necessarily produces
that additional tendency to advance which is seen in
the case of commodities when any general and continu-
ous cause operates to increase their price. As, during
the rapid depreciation of currency which marked the
latter days of the Southern Confederacy, the 'fact that
whatever was bought one day could be sold for a higher
price the next, operated to carry up the price of com-
modities even faster than the depreciation of the cur-
rency, so does the steady increase of land values, which
material progress produces, operate still further to
accelerate the increase. We see this secondary cause
operating in full force in Chose manias of land specula-
tion which mark the growth of new communities; but
though these are the abnormal and occasional mani-
festations, it is undeniable that the cause steadily oper-
260 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS BoohlV
ates, widi greater or less intensity, in all progressive
societies.
The cause •which limits speculation in commodities,
the tendency of increasing price to draw forth additional
supplies, cannot lijnit the speculative advance in land
values, as land is a fixed quantity, which human agency
can neither increase nor diminish; but there is never-
theless a limit to the price of land, in the minimum
required by labor and capital as the condition of en-
gaging in production. If it were possible continuously
to reduce wages until zero were reached, it would be
possible continuously to increase rent until it swallowed
up the whole produce. But as wages cannot be per-
manently reduced below" the point at which laborers
will consent to work and reproduce, nor interest below
the point at which capital wdll be devoted to production,
there is a limit which restrains the speculative advance
of rent. Hence speculation cannot have the same scope
to advance rent in countries where wages and interest
are already near the minimum, as in countries w"here
they are considerably above it. Yet that there is in all
progressive countries a constant tendency in the specu-
lative advance of rent to overpass the limit w’here pro-
duction would cease, is, I think, shown by recurring
seasons of industrial paralysis — a matter which will be
more fully examined in the next book.
BOOK V
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
CHAPTER I.— THE PRIMARY CAUSE OP RECURRING PAROXYSMS
OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION
CHAPTER n.— THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY AMID ADVANCING
WEALTH
To whomsoever the soil at' any time belongs, to him belong
the fruits of it. White parasols, and elephants mad with pride
are the flowers of a grant of land. — Sir Wm. Jones’ translation
o] an Indian grant of land, found at Tanna.
The widow is gathering nettles for her children’s dinner; a
perfumed seigneur, delicately lounging in the CEil de Boeuf, '
hath an alchemy whereby he will extract from her the third
nettle, and call it rent. — Carlyle.
CHAPTER I
THE PRIMARY CAUSE OF RECURRING PAROXYSMS OF
INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION
Our long inquiry'- is ended. We may now marshal the
results.
To begin with the industrial depressions, to account
for which so many contradictory and self-contradictory
theories are broached.
A consideration of the manner in which the specula-
tive advance in land values cuts down the earnings of
labor and capital and checks production leads, I think,
irresistibly to the conclusion that this is the main cause
of those periodical industrial depressions to which every
civilized country, and all civilized countries together,
seem increasingly liable.
I do not mean to say that there are not other proxi-
mate causes. The growing complexity and interde-
pendence of the machinery of production, which makes
each shock or stoppage propagate itself through a widen-
ing circle; the essential defect of currencies which
contract when most needed, and the tremendous alterna-
tions in volume that occur in the simpler forms of com-
mercial credit, which, to a much greater extent than
ciurency in any form, constitute the medium or flux of
exchanges; the protective tariffs which present artificial
barriers to the interplay of productive forces, and other
similar causes, undoubtedly bear important part in pro-
ducing and continuing what are called hard times. But,
both from the consideration of principles and the obser-
263
266
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
Book V.
ing from the principle. If we reverse the process, it is
as easy by induction to reach the principle by tracina
up the phenomena.
These seasons of depression are always preceded by
seasons of activity and speculation, and on all hand.?
the connection between the two is admitted — ^the depres-
sion being looked upon as the reaction from the specu-
lation, as the headache of the morning is the reaction
from the debauch of the night. But as to the manner
in which the depression results from the speculation^,
there are two classes or schools of opinion, as the at-
tempts made on both sides of the Atlantic to account ior
the present industrial depression will show.
One school says that, the speculation produced the
depression by causing over-production, and point to the
warehouses filled with goods that cannot be sold at
remunerative prices, to mills closed or working on half
time, to mines shut down and steamers laid up, to
money lying idly in bank vaults,, and workmen com-
pelled to idleness and privation. They point .to these
facts as showing that the production has exceeded the
demand for consumption, and they point, moreover, to
the fact that when government during war enters the
field as an enormous consumer, brisk times prevail, as
in the United States during the civil war and in Eng-
land dxiring the Napoleonic struggle.
The other school says that the speculation has pro-
duced the depression by leading to over-consumption,
and point to full warehouses, rusting steamers, closed
mills,, and idle workmen as evidences of a cessation of
effective demand, which, they say, evidently results
from the fact that people, made extravagant by a fic-
titious prosperity, have lived bej'-ond their means, and
are now obliged to retrench — ^that is, td consume less
wealth. They point, moreover,' to the enormous con-
sumption of wealth by wars, by the building of unre-
Cftap. /. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION 267
munerative railroads, by loans to bankrupt govern-
ments, etc., as extravagances which, though not felt at
the time, just as the spendthrift does not at the moment
feel the impairment of his fortune, must now be made
up by a season of reduced consumption.
Now, each of these theories evidently expresses one
side or phase of a general truth, but each of them evi-
dently fails to comprehend the full truth. As an ex-
planation of the phenomena, each is equally and utterly
preposterous.
For while the great masses of men want more wealth
than they can get, and while they are willing, to give
for it that which is the basis and raw material of wealth
—their labor— how can there be over-production? And
^hile the machinery of production wastes and producers
are condemned to unwilling idleness, how can there be
over-consumption?
When, with the desire to consume more, there co-
"^xisf the ability and willingness to produce more, indus-
trial and commercial paralysis cannot be charged either
to over-production or to over-consumption. Manifestly,
the trouble is that production and consumption cannot
meet and satisfy each other.
How does this inability arise? It is evidently and
by common consent the result of speculation. But of
speculation in what?
Certainly not of speculation in things which are the
products of labor — in agricultural or mineral produc-
tions, or manufactured goods, for the effect of specula-
tion in such things, as is well shown in current treatises
that spare me the necessity of illustration, is simply to
equalize supply and demand, and to steady the inter-
play of production and consumption by an action anal-
ogous to that of a fly-wheel in a machine.
Therefore, if speculation be the cause of these indus-
trial depressions, it must be speculation in things not
264
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
Book'V.
vation of phenomena, it is clear that the great initiatory
cause is to be looked for in the speculative advance of
land values.
In the preceding chapter I have shown that the specu-
lative advance in land values tends to press the margin -
of cultivation, or production, beyond its normal limit,
thus compelling labor and capital to accept of a smaller
return, or (and this is the only way they can resist the
tendency) to cease production. Now, it is not only
natural that labor and capital should resist the crowding
down of wages and interest by the speculative advance
of rent, but they are driven to this in self-defense, inas-
much as there is a minimum of return below which
labor cannot exist nor capital be maintained. Hence,
from the fact of speculation in land, we may infer -all
the phenomena which mark these recurring seasons of
industrial depression.
Given a progressive community, in which population
is increasing and one improvement succeeds another,
and land must constantly increase in value. This
steady increase naturally leads to speculation in which
future increase is anticipated, and land values are car-
ried beyond the point at which, under the existing con-
ditions of production, their accustomed returns would
be left to labor and capital. Production, therefore,
begins to stop. Not that there is necessarily, or even
probably, an absolute diminution in production; but
that there is what in a progressive community would be
equivalent to an absolute diminution of production in a
stationary community— a failure in production to
increase proportionately, owing to the failure of new
increments of labor and- capital to find employment at
the accustomed rates.
This stoppage of production at some points must
necessarily show itself, at other points of the industria
network, in a cessation of demand, which would again
Chap. 1. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION 265
check production there, and thus the paralysis would
communicate itself through all the interlacings of indus-
try and commerce, producing everywhere a partial dis-
jointing of production' and exchange, and resulting' in
the phenomena that seem to show over-production or
over-consumption, according to the standpoint from
which they are viewed.
The' period of depression thus ensuing would continue
until- (1) the speculative advance in rents had been
lost; or (2) the increase in the efficiency of labor, owing
to the growth of population and the progress of improve-
ment, had enabled the normal rent line to overtake the
speculative rent line; or (3) labor and capital had be-
come reconciled to engaging in production for smaller
returns.. Or, most probably, all three of these causes
■^ould co-operate to produce a new equilibrium, at which
nil the forces of production would again engage, and a
season of activity ensue; whereupon rent would begin
to advance again, a speculative advance again take
place, production again be checked, and the same round
l^e gone over.'
In the elaborate and complicated system of production
■which is characteristic of modern civilization, where,
moreover, there is no such thing as a distinct and inde-
pendent industrial community, but geographically or
politically separated communities blend and interlace
their industrial organizations in different modes and
Varying measures, it is not to be expected that effect ^
should be seen to follow cause as clearly and definitely
as Would be the case in a simpler development of indus-
tiy, and in a community forming a complete and dis-
tinct industrial whole; but, nevertheless, the phenomena
actually presented by these alternate seasons of activity
fnd depression clearly correspond with those we have
inferred from the speculative advance of rent.
Deduction' thus shows the actual phenomena as result-
266
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
Book V.
ing from the principle. If we reverse the process, it is
as easy by induction to reach the principle by tracing
up the phenomena.
These seasons of depression are always preceded by
seasons of activity and speculation, and- on all handa
the connection between the two is admitted — ^the depres-
sion being looked upon as the reaction from the specu*
lation, as the headache of the morning is the reaction
from the debauch of the night. But as to the manner
in which the depression results from the speculationr
there are two classes or schools of opinion, as the at^
tempts made on both sides of the Atlantic to account for
the present industrial depression will show.
One school says that, the speculation produced the •
depression by causing over-production, and point to the
warehouses filled with goods that cannot be sold at
remunerative prices, to mills closed or working on half
time, to mines shut down and steamers laid up, to
money lying idly in bank vaults, and workmen com-
pelled to idleness and privation. They point to these
facts as showing that the production has exceeded the
demand for consumption, and they point, moreover, to
the fact that when government during war enters the
field as an enormous consumer, brisk times prevail, as
in the United States during the civil war and in Eng-
land during the Napoleonic struggle.
The other school says that the speculation has pro-
duced the depression by leading to over-consumption,,
and point to full warehouses, rusting steamers, closed
mills, and idle workmen as evidences of a cessation of
effective demand, which, they say, evidently results
from the fact that people, made extravagant by a fic-
titious prosperity, have lived beyond their means, and
are now obliged to retrench— that is, ta consume less
wealth. They point, moreover, to the enormous con-
sumption of wealth by wars, by the building of unre-
C?!op. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION 267
munerative railroads, by loans to bankrupt govern-
ments, etc., as extravagances which, though not felt at
the time, just as the spendthrift does not at the moment
feel the impairment of his fortune, must now be made
up by a season of reduced consumption.
Now, each of these theories evidently expresses one
side or phase of a general truth, but each of them evi-
dentlj’- fails to comprehend the full truth. As an ex-
planation of the phenomena, each is equally and utterly
preposterous.
Tor while the great masses of men want more wealth
than they can get, and while they are willing. to give
for it that which is the basis and raw material of wealth
“—their labor — how can there be over-production? And
^hile the machinery of production wastes and producers
are condemned to unwilling idleness, how can there be
over-consumption?
When, with the desire to consume more, there co-
■oxist the ability and willingness to produce more, indus-
trial and commercial paralysis cannot be charged either
to over-production or to over-consumption. Manifestly,
the trouble is that production and consumption cannot
meet and satisfy each other.
How does this inability arise? It is evidently and
hy common consent the result of speculation. But of
speculation in what?
Certainly not of speculation in things which are the
products of labor — ^in agricultural or mineral produc-
tions, or manufactured goods, for the effect of specula-
tion in such things, as is well shown in current treatises
that spare me the necessity of illustration, is simply to
equalize supply and demand, and to steady the inter-
play of production and consumption by an" action anal-
ogous to that of a fly-wheel in a machine.
Therefore, if speculation be the cause of these indus-
trial depressions, it must be speculation in things not
268
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
BoohV.
the production of labor, but yet necessary to the exertion
of labor in the production of wealth— of things of ' fixed
quantity; that is to say, it must be speculation in land.
That land speculation is the true cause of industrial
depression is, in the United States, clearly evident. In
each period of industrial activit}’- land values have
steadily risen, culminating in speculation which carried
them up in great jumps. This has been invariably fol-
lowed by a partial cessation of production, and its' cor-
relative, a cessation of effective demand (dull trade),
generally accompanied by a commercial crash; and then
has succeeded a period of comparative stagnation, dur-
ing which the equilibrium has been again slowly estab-
lished, and the same round been run again. This
relation is observable throughout the civilized world.
Periods of industrial activity always culminate in a
speculative advance of land values, followed by symp-
toms of checked production, generally shown at first
by cessation of demand from the newer countries, where
the advance in land values has been greatest.
That this must be the main explanation of these
periods of depression, will be seen by an analysis of the
facts.
All trade, let it be remembered, is the exchange of
commodities for commodities, and hence the cessation
of demand for some commodities, which marks the de-
pression of trade, is really a cessation in the supply of ,
other commodities. That dealers find their sales de-
clining and manufacturers find orders falling off, while
the things which they have to sell, or stand ready to
make, are things for which there is yet a - widespread
desire,' simply shows that the supply of other things,
which in the course of trade would be. given for them,
has declined. In common parlance we say that “buyers
have no money,’' or that “money is becoming scarce,”
but in talking in this way we ignore the fact that money
Chap. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION . 269 ‘
is but the medium of exchange. What the -would-be
buyers really lack is not money, but commodities -which
they can turn into money — ^what is really becoming
scarcer is, produce of some sort. The diminution of the
effective demand of consumers is therefore but a result
of the diminution of production.
This is seen very clearly by storekeepers in a manu'.
factoring town when the mills are shut do-wn and opera- -
tives thrown out of work. It is the cessation of
production which deprives the operatives of means to
make the purchases they desire, and thus leaves the
storekeeper with what, in view of the 'lessened demand, is
a superabundant stock, and forces him to discharge some
of his clerks and otherwise reduce his demands. And
the cessation of demand (I am speaking, of course, of
general cases and not of any alteration in relative de-
mand from such causes as change of fashion), which
has left the manufacturer with superabundant stock and
compelled him to discharge his hands, must arise .in the
same way. Somewhere, it may be at the other end of
the world", a check in production has produced a check
in the demand for consumption. That demand is les-
sened without want being satisfied, shows that produc-
tion is somewhere checked.
People want the things the manufacturer makes as
much as ever, just as the operatives want the things the
storekeeper has to sell. But they do not have as much
to give for them. Production has somewhere been
checked, and this reduction in the supply of some things
has shown it-self in cessation of demand for others, the
check propagating itself through the whole framework
of industry and exchange. Now, the industrial pyramid
manifestly rests on the land. The primary and funda-
mental occupations, which create a demand for all
others, are evidently those which exlract wealth from
Dature, and, hence, if we trace from one exchange point
270
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
Book V.
to another, and from one occupation to another, this
check to production, which shows itself in decreased
purchasing power, we must ultimately find it in some,
obstacle which checks labor in expending itself on land.
And that obstacle, it is clear, is the speculative advance
in rent, or the value of land, which produces the same
effects as (in fact, it is) a lock-out of labor and capital
by land owners. This check to production, beginning at
the basis of interlaced industry, propagates itself from
exchange point to exchange point, cessation of supply
becoming failure of demand, until, so to speak, the
whole machine is thrown out of gear, and the spectacle
is everywhere presented of labor going to waste while
laborers suffer from want.
This strange and unnatural spectacle of large num-
bers of willing men who cannot find employment is
enough to suggest the true cause to whomsoever can
think consecutively. For, though custom has dulled us
to it, it ts a strange and unnatural thing that men who
wish to labor, in order to satisfy their wants, cannot
* find the opportunity — as, since labor is that which pro-
duces wealth, the man who seeks to exchange labor for
food, clothing, or any other form of wealth, is like one
who proposes to give bullion for coin, or wheat for flour.
We talk about the supply of labor and the demand for
labor, but, evidently, these are only relative terms. The
supply of labor is everywhere the same — ^two hands al-
ways come into the world with one mouth, twenty-one
boys to every twenty girls; and the demand for labor
must always exist as long as men want things which
labor alone can procure. We talk about the 'Vant of
work,” but, evidently, it is not work that is short while
want continues; evidently, the supply of labor cannot
be too great, nor the demand for labor too small, when
people suffer for the lack of things that labor produces.
The real trouble must be that supply is somehow pre-
Chav I- ^ CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION 271
vented from satisfying demand, that somewhere there
is an obstacle which prevents labor from producing the
things that laborers want.
Take the case of any one of these vast masses of un-
employed men, to whom, though he never heard of Mal-
thus, it to-day seems that there are too many people ip
the world. In his own wants, in the needs of his anx-
ious wife, in the demands of his half-cared-for, perhaps
even hungry and shivering children, there is demand
enough for labor. Heaven knows! In his own willing
hands is the supply. Put him on a solitary island, and
though cut off from all the enormous advantages which
the co-operation, combination, and machinery of a civil-
ized commimity give to the productive powers of man,
yet his two hands can fill the mouths and keep warm
the backs that depend upon them. Yet where produc-
tive power is at its highest development they cannot.
Why? Is it not because in the one case he has access
to the material and forces of nature, and in the other
this access is denied?
Is it not the fact that labor is thus shut off from
natiue which can alone explain the state of things that
compels men to stand idle who would willingly supply
their wants by their labor? The proximate cause of en-
forced idleness with one set of men may be the cessation
of demand on the part of other men for the particular
things they produce, but trace this cause from point to
point, from occupation to occupation, and you will find
that enforced idleness in one trade is caused by enforced
idleness in another, and that the paralysis which pro-
duces dullness in all trades cannot be said to spring
from too great a supply of labor or too small a demand
for labor, but must proceed from the fact that supply
cannot meet demand by producing the things which
satisfy want and are the object of labor.
-Now, what is necessary to enable labor to produce
272
TE. . ROBLEM SOLVED
BoohV
these things, is land. When we speak of Ia6or creating
wealth, we speak mctaphoricaDy. Man creates nothing.
The whole human race, were tlie}’’ to labor forever, could
not create the tiniest mote that floats in a sunbeam—
could not make this rolling sphere one atom heavier or
one atom lighter. In producing wealth, labor, with th'j
aid of natural forces, but works up, into the forms de-
sired, pre-existing matter, and, to produce wealth, must,
therefore, have access to this matter and to these forces
— that is to say, to land. The land is the source of all
wealth. It is the mine from which must be drawn the
ore that labor fashions. It is the substance to which
labor gives the form. And, hence, wnen labor cannot
satisfy its wants, may we not with certaint}’’ infer that
it can be from no other cause than that labor is denied
access to land?
When in all trades there is what we call scarcity of
employment; when, everywhere, labor wastes, while de-
sire is imsatisfied, must not the obstacle which prevents
labor from producing the wealth it needs, lie at the
foundation of the industrial structure? That founda-
tion is Jand. Milliners, optical instrument makers, /
gilders, and polishers, are not the pioneers of new settle-
ments. Miners did not go to California or Australia be-
cause shoemakers, tailors, machinists, and printers were
there. But those trades followed the miners, just as
they are now following the gold diggers into the Black
Hills and the diamond diggers into South Africa. It i'J
not the storekeeper who is the cause of the farmer, but
the farmer who brings the storekeeper. It is not the
growth of the city that develops the country, but the
development of the. country that makes the city grow.
And, hence, when, through all trades, men willing to
work cannot find opportunity to do so, the difficulty
<iiust Erise in the employment thst creates e demaDu
Oxap. 1. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION 27S
for all other employments — it must be because labor is
shut out from land.
In Leeds or Lowell, in Philadelphia or Manchester, in
London or New York, it may require a grasp of first
principles to see this; but where industrial development
has not become so elaborate, nor the extreme links of
the chain so widely separated, one has but to look at
obvious facts. Although not yet thirty years old, the
city of San Francisco, both in population and in com-
mercial importance, ranks among the great cities of the
world, and, next to New York, is the most metropolitan
of American cities. Though not yet thirty years old,
she has had for some years an increasing number of un-
employed men. Clearly, here, it is because men cannot
find, employment in the country that there are so many
unemployed in the city ; for when the harvest opens they
go trooping out, and when it is over they come trooping
back to the city again. If these now unemployed men
were producing wealth from the land, th6y would not
only be employing themselves, but would be employing
all the mechanics of the city, giving custom to the store-
keepers, trade to the merchants, audiences to the the-
aters, and subscribers and advertisements to the
newspapers — creating effective demand that would be
felt in New England and Old England, and wherever
throughout the world come the articles that, when they
have the means to pay for them, such a population con-
sumes.
Now, why is it that this unemployed labor cannot
employ itself upon the land? Not that the land is all
in use. Though all the symptoms that in older coun-
tries are taken as showing a redundancy of population
are beginning to manifest themselves in San Francisco,
it is idle to talk of redundancy of population in a State
that with greater natural resources than France has not
yet a million of people. .Within a few miles of San
272
TE. . ROBLEM SOLVED
BoohV
these things, is land. When we speak of ]a6or creating
wealth, we speak metaphorically. Man creates nothing.
The whole human race, were they to labor forever, could
not create the tiniest mote that j0oats in a sunbeam —
could not make this rolling sphere one atom heavier or
one atom lighter. In producing wealth, labor, with th's
aid of natural forces, but works up, into the forms de-
sired, pre-existing matter, and, to produce wealth, must,
therefore, have access to this matter and to these forces
— ^that is to say, to land. The land is the source of all
wealth. It is the mine from which must be drawn the
ore that labor fashions. It is the substance to which
labor gives the form. And, hence, wnen labor cannot
satisfy its w^ants, may wn not with certainty infer that
it can be from no other cause than that labor is denied
access to land?
When in all trades there is what we call scarcity of
employment; when, every w^here, labor wastes, while de-
sire is unsatisfied, must not the obstacle which prevents
labor from producing the wealth it needs, lie at the
foundation of the industrial structure? That founda-
tion is Jand. Milliners, optical instrument makers, /
gilders, and polishers, are not the pioneers of new settle-
ments. Miners did not go to California or Australia be-
cause shoemakers, tailors, machinists, and printers were
there. But those trades followed the miners, just as
they are now following the gold diggers into the Black
Hills and the diamond diggers into South Africa. It in
not the storekeeper w’^ho is the cause of the farmer, but
the farmer who brings the storekeeper. It is not the
growth of the city, that develops the country, but the
development of the country that makes the city^ grow.
And, hence, when, through all trades, men willing to
work cannot find opportunity to do so, the difficulty
must arise in the emplojonent that creates a demand
Chap. I. CAUSE OF.. INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION 27S
for all other employments — ^it must be because labor is
shut out frprn land.
In Leeds or Lowell, in Philadelphia or Manchester, in
London or New York, it may require a grasp of first
principles to see this; but where industrial development
has not become so elaborate, nor the extreme links of
the chain so widely separated, one has but to look at
obvious facts. Although not yet thirty years old, the
city of San Francisco, both in population and in com-
mercial importance, ranks among the great cities of the
world, and, next to New York, is the most metropolitan
of American cities. Though not yet thirty years old,
she has had for some years an increasing number of un-
employed men. Clearly, here, it is because men cannot
find employment in the country that there are so many
unemployed in the city ; for when the harvest opens they
go trooping out, and when it is over they come trooping
back to the city again. If these now unemployed men
were producing wealth from the land, they would not
only be employing themselves, but would be . employing
all the mechanics of the city, giving custom to the store-
keepers, trade to the merchants, audiences to the the-
aters, and subscribers and advertisements to the
newspapers — creating effective demand that would be
felt in New England and Old England, and wherever
throughout the world come the articles that, when they
have the means to pay for them, such a population con-
sumes.
Now, why is it that this unemployed labor cannot
employ itself upon the land? Not that the land is all
in use. Though all the symptoms that in older coun-
tries are taken as showing a redundancy of population
are beginning to manifest themselves in San Francisco,
it is idle to talk of redundancy of population in a State
that with greater natural resources than France has not
yet a million of people. Within a few miles of San
274
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
Booh V.
i'rancisco is unused land enough to give employment to
every man who wants it* I do not mean to say that
every unemployed man could turn farmer or build him-
self a house, if he had the land; but that enough could
^ and W'ould do so to give employment to the rest. What
is it, then, that prevents labor from employing itself on
this land? Simply, that it has been monopolized and is
held at speculative prices, based not upon present value,
but upon the added value that will come with the future
growth of population.
What may thus be seen in San Francisco by whoever
is w’illing to see, may, I doubt not, be seen as clearly in
other places.
The present commercial and industrial depression,
which first clearly manifested itself in the United States
in 1872, and has spread with greater or less intensify
over the civilized world, is largely attributed to the un-
due extension of the railroad system, with which there
are many things that seem to show its relation. I am
fully conscious that the construction of railroads be-
fore they are actually needed may divert capital and
labor from more to less productive employments, and
make a community poorer instead of richer; and when
the railroad mania was at its highest, I pointed this out
in a political tract addressed to the people of Califor- "
nia ; * but to assign to this wasting of capital such a
widespread industrial dead-lock seems to me like at-
tributing an unusually low tide to the drawing of a few
extra bucketfuls of water. The waste of capitel and la-
bor during the civil war was enormously greater than it
could possibly be by the construction of unnecessary
railroads; but without producing any such result. And,
certainly, there seems to be little sense in talking of the
waste of capital and labor in railroads as causing this
_ - — — ' ■ ' ' — —
*Tbe Subsidy Question and the Democratic Party, 1S71.
Chav. 1. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION 275
depression, when the prominent feature of the depres-
sion has been the superabundance of capital and labor
seeking employment.
Yet, that there is a connection between the rapid con-
struction of railroads and industrial depression, any one
w^'ho understands what increased land values mean, and
who has noticed the effect which the construction of
railroads has upon land speculation, can easily see.
Wherever a railroad was built or projected, lands sprang
up in value under the influence of speculation, and thou-
sands of millions of dollars were added to the nominal
values which capital and labor were asked to pay out-
right, or to pay in installments, as the price of being
allowed to go to work and produce wealth. The inevi-
table result was to check production, and this check to
production propagated itself in a cessation of demand,
which checked production to the furthest verge of the
wide circle of exchanges, operating with accumulated
force in the centers of the great industrial common-
wealth into which commerce links the civilized world.
The primary operations of this cause can, perhaps, be
nowhere more clearly traced than in California, which,
from its comparative isolation, has constituted a pecu-
liarly well-defined community.
Until almost its close, the last decade was marked in
California- by the same industrial activity which was
shown in the Northern States, and, in fact, throughout
the civilized world, when the interruption of exchanges
' and the disarrangement of industry caused by the war
and the blockade of Southern ports is considered. This
activity could not be attributed to inflation of the cur-
rency or to lavish expenditures of the General Govern-
ment, to which in the Eastern States the comparative
activity of the sa'me period has since been attributed;
for, in spite of legal tender laws, the Pacific Coast ad-
hered to a coin currency, and the taxation of the Federal
278
tite peoblem solved
Book V.
There is one thing which, it may seem, I have over-
looked, in attributing these industrial depressions to the
speculative advance of rent or land values as a main
and primary cause. The operation of such a cause,
though it may be rapid, must be progressive — ^resem-
bling a pressure, not a blow. But these industrial
depressions seem to come suddenly — they have, at their
beginning, the character of a paroxysm, followed by a
comparative lethargy, as if of exhaustion. Everything
seems to be going on as usual, commerce and industry
vigorous and expanding, when suddenly there comes a
shock, as of a thunderbolt out of a clear sky — a bank
breaks, a great manufacturer or merchant fails, and, as
if a blow had thrilled through the entire industrial or-
ganization, failure succeeds failure, and on every side
workmen are discharged from employment, and capital
.shrinks into profitless security.
Let me explain what I think to be the reason of this;
To do so, we must take into account the manner in
which exchanges are made, for it is by exchanges, that
all the varied forms of industry are linked together into
one mutually related and interdependent organization.
To enable exchanges to be made between producers far
removed by space and' time, large stocks must be kept
in store and in transit, and this, as I have already ex-
plained, I take to be the great function of capital, in
addition to that of supplying tools and seed. These ex-
changes are7 perhaps necessarily, largely made upon
credit — ^that is to say, the advance upon one side is
made before the return is received on the other, _ ^
Now, without stopping to inquire as to the causes, it
is manifest that these advances are, as a rule, from
the more highly organized and later developed indus-
tries to the more fundamental. The West Coast Afri-
can, for instance, who exchanges palm oil and cocoanuts
for gaudy calico and Birmingham idols, gets his return
Chav. I. CAUSE OP DTDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION 27S
immediately, the English merchant, on the contrary,
has to lay* out of his goods a long while before he gets
his returns. The farmer can sell his crop as soon as it is
harvested, and for cash; the great manufacturer must
keep a large stock, send his goods long distances to
agents, and, generally, sell on time. Thus, as ‘ advances
and credits are generally from what we may call the
secondary, to what we may call the primary industries,
it follows that any check to production which proceeds
from the latter will not immediately manifest itself in
the former. The system of advances and credits con-
stitutes, as it were, an elastic connection, which will give
considerably before breaking, but which, when it breaks,
will break with a snap.
Or, to illustrate in another way what I mean; The
great pyramid of Gizeh is composed of layers of
masonry, the bottom layer, of course, supporting all the
rest. Could we by some means gradually contract this
bottom layer, the upper part of the pyramid would for
some time retain its form, and then, when gravitation
at length overcame the adhesiveness of the material,
would not diminish gradually and regularly, but would
break off suddenly, in large pieces. Now, the industrial
organization may be likened to such a pyramid. What
is the proportion which in a given stage of social de^
velopment the various industries bear to each other, it
is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to say; but it is ob-
vious that there is such a proportion, just as in a print-
' e'r’s font of type there is a certain proportion between
the various letters. Each form of industry, as it is de-
veloped by division of labor, springs from and rises out
of the others, and all rest ultimately upon land; for,
without land, labor is as impotent as would be a man
in void space. To make the illustration closer to the
condition of a progressive country, imagine a pyramid
composed of superimposed layers — ^the whole constantly
276
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
BookV
Government took away verj^ much more than was re-
It was attributable
declinin<^ 1°^/ though placer mining was
wlipof ^’pvada Sliver mines were being opened,
Tn thP fTlI "'T beginning to take the place of gold
the table of exports, and an increasing population and
the improvement m the methods of production and ex-
^ steadily adding to the efficiency of labor.
With this material progress went on a steadv en-
iiancement m land values— its consequence. This steady
a vance engendered a speciilati\’’e adA^ance, which, with
the railroad era, ran up land values in every direction.
1 the population of California had steadily grown when
e ong, costly, fever-haunted Isthmus route was the
principal mode^ of communication with the Atlantic
t ates, it must, it was thought, increase enormouslv with
the opening of a road v/hich would bring New"^ York
harbor and San Francisco Bay within seven days’ easy
traA’^el, and wlien in the State itself the locomotive took
the place of stage coach and freight wagon. The ex-
pected- increase of land values which would thus accrue
was discounted in advance. Lots on the outskirts of
San Francisco rose hundreds and thousands per cent.,
and farming land was taken up and held for high prices,
in AA'hichever direction an immigrant was likely to go.
But the anticipated rush of immigrants did not take
place. Labor and capital could not pay so much for
[and and make fair returns. ' Production was checked,
if not absolutely, at least relatively. As the trabscon-
tinental railroad approached completion, instead of in-
creased activity symptoms of depression began to
manifest themselves; and, when it- was' completed, to
the season of activity had succeeded a period of depres-
- sion which has not since been fully recovered from, dur-
ing which wages and interest have steadily fallen. What ■
I have called the actual rent line, or margin of cultiva-
Chap. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION 277
tion, is thus (as well as by the steady march of im-
provement and increase of population, which, though
slower than it otherwise would have been, still goes on)
approaching the speculative rent line, but the tenacity
with which a speculative advance in the price of land is
maintained in a developing community is well known *
Now, what thus went on in California went on in
every progressive section of the Union. Everywhere
that a railroad was built or projected, land was mo-
nopolized in anticipation, and the benefit of the im-
provement was discounted in increased land values.
The speculative adyance in rent thus outrunning the
normal advance, production was checked, demand was
decreased, and labor and capital were turned back from
occupations more directly concerned with land, to glut
those in which the value of land is a less perceptible
element. It is thus that the rapid extension of railroads
is related to the succeeding depression.
And what went on in the United States went on in a
greater or less obvious degree all over the progressive
world. Everywhere land values have been steadily iii'
creasing with material, progress, and everywhere this
increase begot a speculative advance. . ■ The impulse of
the primary cause not only radiated from the newer
sections of the Union to the older sections, and from the
United States to Europe, but, everjj'where the primary
cause was acting. And, hence, a world-wide depression
of industry and commerce, begotten of a world-wide
material progress.
*It is astonishing how in a new country of great expectations
speculative, prices of land will be kept ■ up. . It is common to
• hear the expression, “There is no market for real estate; you
cannot sell it at any price,” and yet, at the same time, if you go
to buy it, unless you find somebody who is absolutely com-
pelled to sell, you must pay the prices that prevailed when
speculation ran high. For owners, believing that land values
must ultimately advance, . hold on as long as they can.
278
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
Booh V,
There^ is one thing ■u'hich, it may seam, I havG over-
looked, in attributing these industrial depressions to the
speculative advance of rent or land values as a main
and primary cause. The operation of such a cause,
though it may be rapid, must be progressive — resem-
bling a pressure, not a blow. But these industrial
depressions seem to come suddenly — ^they have, at their
beginning, the character of a paroxysm, followed by a
coihparative lethargy, as if of exhaustion. Everything
Beems to be going on as usual, commerce and industry
vigorous and expanding, when suddenly there comes a
shock, as of a thunderbolt out of a clear sky — a bank
breaks, a great manufacturer or merchant fails, and, as
if a blow had thrilled through the entire industrial or-
ganization, failure succeeds failure, and on every side
workmen are discharged from employment, and capital
.shrinks into profitless security.
Let me explain what I think to be the reason of this;
To do so, we must take into account the manner in
which exchanges are made, for it is by exchanges that -
all the varied forms of industry are linked together into
one mutually related and interdependent organization.
To enable exchanges to be made between producers far
removed by space and time, large stocks must be kept
in store and in transit, and this, as I have already ex-
plained, I take to be the great function of capital, in
addition to that of supplying tools and seed. These ex- '
changes are; perhaps necessarily, largely made upon
credit — ^that is to say, the advance upon one side is
made before the return is received on the other.
Now, without stopping to inquire as to the causes, it
is manifest that these advances are, as a rule, from
the more highly organized and later developed indus-
tries to the more fundamental. The West Coast Afri-
can, for instance, who exchanges palm oil and cocoanuts
for gaudy calico and Birmingham idols, gets his return
Chap. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTEIAL DEPEESSION 278
immediately; the English merchant, on the contrary,
has to lay out of his goods a long while before he gets
his returns. The farmer can sell his crop as soon as it is
harvested, and for cash; the great manufacturer must
keep a large stock, send his goods long distances to
agents, and, generally, sell on time. Thus, as 'advances
and credits are generally from what we may call the
secondary, to what we may call the primary industries,
it follows that any check to production which proceeds
from the latter will not immediately manifest itself in
the former. The system of advances and credits con-
stitutes, as it were, an elastic connection, which will give
considerably before breaking, but which, when it breaks,
will break with a snap.
Or, to illustrate in another way what I mean: The
great pyramid of Gizeh is composed of layers of
masonry, the bottom layer, of course, supporting all the
rest. Could we by some means gradually contract this
bottom layer, the upper part of the pyramid would for
some time retain its form, and then, when gravitation
at length overcame the adhesiveness of the material,
would not diminish gradually and regularly, but would
break off suddenly, in large pieces. Now, the industrial
organization may be likened to such a pyramid. What
is the proportion which in a given stage of social de->
velopment the various industries bear to each other, it
is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to say ; but it is ob-
vious that there is such a proportion, just as in a print-
' eV’s font of type there is a certain proportion between
the various letters. Each form of industry, as it is de-
veloped by division of labor, springs from and rises out
of the others, and all rest ultimately upon land; for,
without land, labor is as impotent as would be a man
in void space. To make the illustration closer to the
condition of a progressive country, imagine a pyramid
composed of superimposed layers — ^the whole constantly
280
THE PROBLEM SOLVEL
Boofc V.
growing and expanding. Imagine the growth of the
layer nearest the ground to be checked. The others will
for a time keep on expanding — ^in fact, for the moment,
the tendency will be quicker expansion, for the vital
force which is refused scope on the ground layer will
strive to find vent in those above — until, at length, there
is a decided overbalance and a sudden crumbling along
all the faces of the pyramid.
That the main cause and general course of the recur-
ring paroxysms of industrial depression, which are be-
coming so marked a feature of modern social life, are
thus e.xplained, is, I think, clear. And let the reader
remember that it is only the main causes and general
courses of such phenomena that we are seeking to trace .
or that, in fact, it is possible to trace with any exact-
ness. Political economy can deal, and has need to deal,
only with general tendencies. ■ The derivative forces are
so multiform, the actions and reactions are so various,
that the exact character of the phenomena cannot, be
predicted. We know that if a tree is cut through it
will fall, but precisely in what direction will be deter-
mined by the inclination of the trunk, the spread of the
branches, the impact of the blows, the quarter and force
of the wind; and even a bird lighting on a twig, or a
frightened squirrel leaping from bough to., bough, will
not be without its' influence. We know that an insult
will arouse a feeling of resentment in the human breast,
but to say how far and in what way it will manifest it-
self, would require a synthesis which would build up the
entire man and all his surroundings, past and present.
The manner in which the sufficient cause to which I
have traced them explains the main features of these
industrial depressions is in ^striking contrast with the
contradictory and self-contradictory attempts which
have been made to explain them on the current theories
of the distribution of wealth. That a speculative ad-
Chap. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTMAL DEPEESSION 281
vance in rent or land values invariably precedes each
of these seasons of industrial depression is everywhere
clear. That they bear to each other the relations of
cause and effect, is obvious to whomsoever considers
the necessary relations between land and labor.
And that the present depression is running its course,
and that, in the manner previously indicated, a new
equilibrium is being established, which will result in an-
other season of comparative activity, may already be
seen in the United States: The normal rent line and the
speculative rent line are being brought together: (1)
By the fall in speculative land values, which is very
evident in the reduction of rents and shrinkage of real
estate values in' the principal cities. (2) By the in-'
creased efficiency of labor, arising from the growth of
population and the utilization of new inventions and
discoveries, some of which almost as important as that
of the use of steam we seem to be on the verge of grasp-
ing. (3) By the lowering of the habitual standard of
interest and wages, which, as to interest, is shown by the
negotiation of a government loan at four per cent., and
as to wages is too generally evident for any special cita-
tion. When the equilibrium is thus re-established, a
season of renewed activity, culminating in a speculative
advance of land values, will set in.* But wages and in-
terest .will not recover their lost ground. The net result
of all these perturbations or wave-like movements is the
gradual forcing of wages andjnterest toward their mini-
mum. These temporary and recurring depressions ex-
hibit, in 'fact, as was noticed in the opening chapter,
but intensifications of the' _general movement which
accompanies material progress: ’
*-This was written a year ago. - It is now (July, 1879) evident
that a new period of activity has commehced, as above pre-
dicted, and in New York and Chicago real estate prices have
already begun to recover.
CHAPTER II
THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY AMID ADVANCING WEALTH
The great prohlem, of which these recurring seasons
of industrial depression are but peculiar manifestations,
is now, I think, fully solved, and the social phenomena
which all over the civilized world appall the philanthro-
pist and perplex the statesman, which hang with clouds
the future of the most advanced races, and suggest
doubts of the reality and ultimate goal of what we
have fondly called progress, are now explained.
The reason why, in spite of the increase of productive
power, wages constantly tend to a minimum which will
give but a hare living, is that, with increase in produc-
tive power, rent tends to even greater increase, thus
producing a constant tendency to the forcing down of
wages.
>s —
In every direction, the direct tendency of advancing
civilization is to increase the power of human labor to
satisfy human desires — ^to extirpate poverty, and to
banish want and the fear of want. All the things in
which progress consists, all the conditions which pro-
gressive communities are striving for, have -for their
direct and natural. result the improvement of the mate-
rial (and consequently the intellectual and moral) con-
dition of all within their influence.' The growth of
population, the increase and extension of exchanges, the ,
discoveries of science, the march of invention, the spread
of education, the improvement- of government, and the
Cftap. II.
THE PEKSISTENCE OP POVERTY
283
amelioration of manners, considered as material forces,
have all a direct tendency to increase the productive
power of labor — ^not of some labor, but of all labor; not
in some departments of industry, but in all departments
of industry; for the law of the production of wealth in
society is the law of “each for all, and all for each/’
But labor cannot reap the benefits which advancing
civilization thus brings, because they are intercepted.
Land being necessary to labor, and being reduced to
private ownership, every increase iu the productive
power of labor but increases rent — ^the price that labor
must' pay for the opportunity to utilize its powers; and
thus all the advantages gained by the march of progress
go to the owners of land, and wages do not increase.
Wages cannot increase; for the greater the earnings of
labor the greater the price that labor must pay out of
its earnings for the opportunity to make any earnings at
all. The mere laborer has thus no more interest in the
general advance of productive power than the Cuban
slave has in advance in the price of sugar. And just as
an advance in the price of sugar may make the condi-
tion of the slave worse, by inducing the master to drive
him harder, so may the condition of the free laborer be
positively, as well as relatively, changed for the worse
by the increase in the productive power of his labor.
For, begotten of the continuous advance of rents, arises
a speculative tendency which discounts the effect of
future improvements by a still further advance of rent,
and thus tends, where this has not occurred from the
normal advance of rent, to drive wages dovm to the
slave point — ^the point at which the laborer can just
live.
And thus robbed of all the benefits of the increase in
productive power, labor is exposed to certain effects of
advancing civilization which, vithout the advantages
that naturally accompany them, are positive evils, and
284
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
Booh V.
of themselves tend to reduce the free Jaborer to the
helpless and degraded condition of the slave.
For all improvements which add to productive power
as civilization advances consist in, or necessitate, a still
further subdivision of labor, and the efficiency of the
whole body of laborers is increased at the expense of
the independence .of the constituents. The individual
laborer acquires knowledge of and sldll in but an
infinitesimal part of the varied processes which are
required to supply even the commonest wants. The
aggregate produce of the labor of a savage tribe is
small, but each member is capable of an independent
life. He can build his own habitation, hew out or stitch
together his own canoe, make his own clothing, manu-
facture his own weapons, snares, tools and ornaments.
He has all the knowledge of nature possessed by his
tribe — ^knows what vegetable productions are fit for
food, and where they may be found; knows the habits
and resorts of beasts, birds, fishes, and insects; can pilot'
himself by the sun or the stars, by the turning of blos-
soms or the mosses on the trees; is, in short, capable of
supplying all his wants. He may- be cut oif from his
fellows and still live; and thus possesses an independent
power which makes him a free contracting party in his
relations to the community of which he is a member.
Coihpare with this savage the laborer in the lowest
ranks of civilized society, whose, life is spent in produc-
ing but one thing, or oftener but the infinitesimal part
of one thing, out of the multiplicity of things that .con-
stitute the wealth' of society and go to supply even the
most primitive wants; who not only cannot make even
the tools required for his work, but often works with
tools that he does not own, and can never hope to own.
Compelled to even closer and more continuous labor
than the savage, and gaining by it no more than the
savage gets— the mere necessaries of life— he loses the
7kav.IL THE PERSISTENCE OF rOVERTY 285
independence of the savage. He is not onh' unable to
apply his oirn powers to the direct satisfaction of his
own wants, but, without the concurrence of many others,
he is unable to apply them indirectly to the satisfaction
of his wants. He is a mere link- in an enormous chain
of producers and consumers, helpless to separate him-
self, and helpless to move, except as they move. The
worse his position in society, the more dependent is he
on society; the more utterly unable does he become to
do anything for himself. The very power of exerting his
labor for the satisfaction of his wants passes from his
own control, and may be taken away or restored by the
actions of others, or by general causes over which he
has no more influence than he has over the motions of
the solar system. The primeval curse comes to be
looked upon as a boon, and men think, and talk, and
clamor, and legislate as though monotonous manual
labor in itself were a good- and not an evil, an end and
not a means. Under such circumstances, the man loses
the essential qualit5’' of manhood— the godlike power of
modifying and controlling conditions; He becomes a
slave, a machine, a commodity — a thing, in some re-
spects, lower than the animal.
I am no sentimental admirer' of the savage state.' I
do not get my ideas of the untutored children of nature
from Rousseau, or Chateaubriand, or Cooper. I am
conscious of its material and mental > poverty, and its
. low and narrow range. I believe that civilization is not
only the natural destiny of man, 'but the enfranchise-
ment, elevation, and refinement of all his powers, and
think that it is only in such moods as may lead him to
envy the cud-chewing cattle, that a 'man who is free -to
the advantages of civilization could look . with regret
upon the savage state. But, nevertl/eless, I think no
, one who will open his eyes to the facts- can resist the
conclusion that there are in the ^heart of our civilization
m
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
Book V.
large classes with whom the veriest savage could not
afford to exchange. It is my' deliberate opinion that if,
•standing on the threshold of being, one were given the
choice of entering life as a Tierra del Fuegan, a black
fellow of Australia, an Esquimaux in the Arctic Circle,
or among the lowest classes in such a highly civilized
country as Great Britain, he would make infinitely the
better choice in selecting the lot of the savage. For
, those classes who in the midst of wealth are condemned
to want suffer all the privations' of the savage, without
his sense of personal freedom; they are condemned to
more than his narrowness and littleness, without op-
portunity for the growth of his rude virtues; if their
horizon is wider, it is but to reveal blessings that they
cannot enjoy.
There are some to whom this may seem like exaggera-
tion, but it is only because they have never suffered
themselves to realize the true condition of those classes
Upon whom the iron heel of modern civilization presses
with full force. As De Tocqueville observes, in one of
his letters to Mme. Swetchine, “we so soon become used
to the thought of want that we do not feel that an evil
which grows greater to the sufferer the longer it lasts
becomes less to the observer by the very fact of its
duration;” and perhaps the best proof of the justice of
'this observation is that in cities where there exists a
pauper class and a criminal, class, where young girls
’ shiver as they sew .for bread, and tattered and bare-
footed children make a, home in- the streets, money- is
regularly raised to send missionaries to the heathen 1
Send missionaries to the heathen! it would be laughable
if it were not so sad. Baal no longer stretches forth his
hideous, sloping arms; but in- Christian lands mothers
slay their infants for a burial fee I And I challenge the
production from any authentic accounts of savage life of
such descriptions of degradation as are to be found in
Chav. II. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY 287
official documents of highly civilized countries — in re-
ports of Sanitary Commissioners .and of inquiries into
the condition of the laboring poor.
The simple theory which I have outlined (if indeed it
can be called a theory which is but the recognition of
the most obvious relations) explains this conjunction
of poverty with wealth, of low wages with high produc-
tive power, of degradation amid enlightenment, of virtual
slavery in political liberty. It harmonizes, as results
flowing from a general and inexorable law, facts 'other-
wise most perplexing, and exhibits- the sequence and
relation between phenomena that without reference to it
are diverse and contradictory. It explains why interest
and wages are higher in new than in older communities,
though the average, as well, as the aggregate, production
of wealth is less. It explains why improvements which
increase the productive power of labor and capital in-
crease the reward of neither. It explains what is com-
monly called the conflict between labor and capital,,
while proving the real harmony of interest between
them. It cuts the last inch of ground from under the
fallacies of protection, while showing why free trade
fails to benefit permanently the working classes. It ex-
plains why want increases with abundance, and wealth
tends to greater and greater aggregations. It explains
the periodically recurring depressions of industry with-
out recourse either to the absurdity of '‘over-produc-
tion” or the absurdity of “over-consumption.” It
explains the enforced idleness of large numbers of would-
be producers, which wastes the productive force of ad-
vanced communities, without the absurd assumption
that there is too little work to do or that there are toe
many to do it. It explains the ill effects upon the labor-
ing classes which often follow the introduction of ma-
chinery, without denying the natural advantages which
the use of machineSry gives. It explains the vice and
290
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
BookV.
Jabor; for though actual wages may in some places
have somewhat risen, the rise is clearly attributable to
other causes. In more places they have fallen — ^that is,
where it has been possible for them to fall — for there is
a minimum below which laborers cannot keep up their
numbers. And, everywhere, wages, as a proportion of
the produce, have decreased.
How the Black Death brought about the great rise of
wages in England in the Fourteenth Centuiy is clearly
discernible, in the efforts of the land holders to regulate
wages by statute. That that awful reduction in popula-
tion, instead of increasing, really reduced the effective
power of labor, there can be no doubt; but the lessen-
ing of competition for land still more greatly reduced
rent, and wages advanced so largely that force and
penal laws were called in to keep them down. The re-
verse effect followed the monopolization of land that
went on in England during the reign of Henry VIII, in
the inclosure of commons and the division of the church
lands between the panders and parasites who were thus
enabled to found noble families. The result was ths
same as that to which a speculative increase in land
values tends. According to Malthus (who, in his ^'Prin-
ciples of Political Economy,” mentions the fact without
connecting it with land tenures), in, the reign of Henry
VII, half a bushel of w'heat would purchase but little
more than a day’s common Jabor, but in the latter part
of the .reign of Elizabeth, half a bushel of wheat would
purchase three days’ common labor. I can hardly be-
lieve that the reduction in wages could have been so
great as this comparison would indicate; but that there
was a reduction in , common wages, and great distress
among the laboring classes, is evident from the com-
plaints of “sturdy vagrants” and the statutes made to
suppress them. The rapid monopolization of the land,
the carrying of the speculative rent line beyond the nor-
Chap. It.
THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY
291
mal rent line, produced tramps and paupers, just as like
effects from like causes have lately been evident in the
United States.
“Land which went heretofore for twenty or forty
pounds a year,” said Hugh Latimer, “now is let for fifty
or a hundred. My father was a yeoman, and had no
lands of his ovm ; only he had a farm at a rent of three
or four pounds -by the year at the uttermost, and there-
Rppn he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men. He
had walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked
thirty kine; he was able and did find the King a harness
with himself and his horse when he came to the place
that he should receive the King’s wages. I can remem-
ber that I buckled his harness when he went to Black-
heath Field. He kept me to school; he married my
sisters vdth five pounds apiece, so that he brought them
in godliness and fear of God. He kept hospitality
for his neighbors and some alms he gave to the poor.
And all this he did of the same farm, where he that now
hath it payeth sixteen pounds rent or more by year, and
is not able to do anything for his Prince, for himself,
nor his children, nor to give a cup of drink to the poor.”
_ “In this way,” said Sir Thomas More, referring to the
ejectment of small farmers which characterized this ad-
vance of rent, “it comes to pass that these poor wretches,
inen, women, husbands, orphans, widows, parents with
little children, householders greater in number than in
■wealth, all of these emigrate from their native fieldSj
■without knowing where to go.”
And so from the stuff of the Latimers and Mores — •
from the sturdy spirit that amid the flames of the Ox^
ford stake cried, “Play the man, Master Ridley!” and
the mingled strength and sweetness that neither pros-
perity could taint nor the ax of the executioner abash
— ^were evolved' thieves and vagrants, the mass of crimi-
nality and pauperism that still blights the innermost
m
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
Book V,
*'='“selves amid dense population,
ShM *0 short-
signtcd and selfish enactments of men.
This explanation is in accordance with all the facts,
^°rld to-day. In countries the most
widely differing— under conditions the most diverse as
to government, as to industries, as to tariffs, as to cur-
rency you will find distress among the working classes;
u everywhere that you thus find distress and de.stitu-
tion m the midst of wealth you will find that the land
m monopolized; that instead of being treated as the
common property of the whole people, it is treated as
the private property of individuals; that, for its use by
labor. large revenues are extorted from the earnings of
labor. Look oyer the world to-day, comparing differ-
ent countries with each other, and you will see that it
IS not the abundance of capital or the productiveness
of labor that makes- wages high -or low; but the extent
to which the monopolizers of land can, in rent, le\y
tribute upon the earnings of labor. Is it not a notorious
fact, known - to the most ignorant, that new countries,
where the aggregate, wealth is small, but where land is
7 <*-*»<-» r '/'I T 1 •
— rrvyo.iuii io uuL wntjre iaiia io
cheap, are always • oetter countries for the laboring
classes than the' rir.h nnnnf.rioc xtrlio'nn 7o-r»/^ tc* ^09,1*?
X / VV/ V4XJI UX XV/O l/iJC Jcl
classes than the rich countries, where land is aearj
Wherever you find land relatively low, will you not find
wages relatively high? And wherever land is high, will
you not find wages low? As land increases in value,
poverty deepens .and pauperism appears, - In the new
settlements, where land is cheap, you will find no beg-
gars, and the ' inequalities in condition are very slight.
In the great cities, where land is so' valuable that it is
measured by the -foot, you will find the extremes of pov-
erty and of luxury. And this disparity in condition be-
tween the two extremes of the social scale may always
be measured by the/price of land. Land in New York
Chap. 11. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY Jj89
is more valuable than in San Francisco; and in New
York, the San Franciscan maj^ .see squalor and misery
that will make him stand aghast. Land is more val-
uable in London than in New York; and in London,
there is squalor and destitution wmrse than, that of
New York.
Compare the same country’- in different times, and the
same relation is obvious. As the result of much investi-
gation, Hal}am says he is convinced that the wages of
manual labor were greater in amount in England during
the middle ages than they are now^ Whether this is so
or not, it is evident that the3>- could not have been much,
if any, less. The enormous increase in the eflficiency of
labor, wdiich even in agriculture is estimated at seven or
eight hundred per cent., and in many branches of indus-
try is almost incalculable, has only added to rent. The
rent of agricultural land in England is now, according to
Professor Rogers, 120 times as great, measured in
money, as it w^as 500 years ago, and 14 times as great,
measured in wheat; while in the rent of building land,
end mineral land, the advance has been enormously
greater. According to the estimate of Professor Faw-
cett, the capitalized rental value of the land of England
now amounts to £4,500,000,000, or $21,870,000,000 — ^that
is to say, a few thousand of the people of England hold '
e lien upon the labor of the rest, the capitalized value
of -which is more than twice as great as, at the average
price of Southern negroes in 1860, would be the value of
her whole population were they slaves.
In Belgium and Flanders, in France and Germany,
the rent and selling price of agi’icultural land have
doubled within the last thirty years.* In short, in-
creased power of production has everywhere added to
the value of land; nowhere has it added to the value of
* Systems of Land' Tenure, published by the Cobden Club. '•
288
THE PROBLEM SOLITSD
'Booh V,
misery which show themselves amid dense population,
vathout attributing to the laws of the All- Wise and All-
Beneficent defects which belong only to the short-
sighted and selfish enactments of men.
This explanation is in . accordance with all the facts.
Look over the world to-day. In countries the most
widely differing — under conditions the most diverse as
to government, as to industries, as to tariffs, as to cur-
rency ^you vdll find distress among the working classes;
but everywhere that you thus find distress and destitu-
tion in the midst of wealth you will find that the land
is monopolized; that instead of being treated as the
common property of the whole people, it is treated as
the private property of individuals; that, for its use by
labor, large revenues are extorted from the earnings of
labor. Look over the world to-day, comparing differ-
ent countries with each other, and you will see that it
is not the abundance of capital . or the productiveness
of labor that makes wages high . or low; but' the extent
to which the monopolizers of land can, in rent, levy
tribute upon the earnings of labor. • Is it not a notorious
fact, known 'to the most ignorant, that new countries,
where the aggregate, wealth is small, but where land is
cheap, , are always • oetter countries for the laboring
classes than the rich ; countries, where land is dear?
Wherever you find -land relatively low,' will you not find
wages relatively high? And wherever land is high, will
you not 'find wages low? As land increases in value,
poverty deepens .and pauperism appears. In the new
settlements, where' land is cheap, you will find no beg-
gars, and the inequalities in condition are very slight.
In the great cities, where land -is so valuable that it is
measured .by the foot, .you 'vnll find the extremes of pov-
erty and of luxury. And this disparity in condition be-
tween the two extremes of the .social scale may always
be measured by the;price of land. Land in New York
Chap. 11.
TIIE TERSISTENCE OF POTORTY
J;S9
is more vnliiable limn in San Francisco; and in New
York, tbc San Franciscan ma^v see squalor and misery
that will make him stand aghast. Land is more vaf-
iiable in London than in New York; and in London,
there is squalor and destitution worse than that, of
New York.
Compare the same country in ditTerent times, and the
sarne relation is obvious. As the result of ranch investi-
gation, Hallam says he is convinced that the wages of
manual labor were greater in amount in England during
the middle ages than tiiey are now. Whether this is so
or not, it is c^'idont that they could not liave been much^
if any, less. The enormous increase in the efficienc}'- of
labor, which even in agriculture is estimated at seven or
eight hundred per cent., and in many branches of indus-
trj' is almost incalculable, has only added to rent. The
rent of agricultural land in England is now, according to
Professor Rogers, 120 times as great, measured in
money, as it was 500 years ago, and 14 times as greats
measured in wheat; while in the rent of building land,
and mineral land, the advance has been enormously
greater. According to the estimate of Professor Faw-
cett, the capitalized rental value of the land of England
now amounts to £4,500,000,000, or §21,870,000,000— that
is to say, a few thousand of the people of England hold '
a lien upon the labor of the rest, the capitalized value
of which is more than twice as great as, at the average
price of Southern negroes in 1860, would be the value of
lier whole population were they slaves.
In Belgium and Flanders, in France and Germany,
fhe rent and selling price' of agi’icultural land have
doubled within the last thirty years.* In short, in-
creased power of production has Overywhere added to
the value of land; nowhere has it added to the value of
* Systems of Land Tenure, published by the Cobden Club.
290
the problem solved
Booh V.
labor; for though actual wages may in some places
have somewhat risen, the rise is clearly attributable to
other causes. In more places they have fallen — ^that is,
where it has been possible for them to fall — for there is
a minimum below which laborers cannot keep up their
numbers. And, everj'-where, wages, as a proportion of
the produce, have decreased.
Sow the Black Death brought about the great rise of
wages in England in the Fourteenth Century is clearly
discernible, in the efforts of the land holders to regulate
wages by statute. That that awful reduction in popula-
tion, instead of increasing, really reduced the effective
power of labor, there can be no doubt; but the lessen-
ing of competition for land still more greatly reduced
rent, and wages advanced so largely that force and
penal laws were called in to keep them down. The re-
verse effect followed the monopolization of land that
went on in England during the reign of Henry VIII, 1b
the inclosure of commons and the division of the church
lands between the panders and parasites who were thus
enabled to found noble families. The result was th®
same as that to which a speculative increase in land
values tends. According to Malthus (who, in his ‘'Prin-
ciples of Political Economy,” mentions the fact without
connecting it with land tenures), in the reign of Henry
VII, half a bushel of wheat would purchase but little
more than a day’s common labor, but in the latter- part
of the r-eign of Elizabeth, half a bushel of wheat would
purchase three days’ common labor. I can hardly be-
lieve that the reduction in wages could have been so
great as this comparison would indicate; but that there
was a reduction in common wages, and great distress
among the laboring classes, is evident from the corn-
plaints of “sturdy ^vagrants” and the statutes made to
suppress them. The rapid monopolization of the land,
the carrying of the speculative rent line beyond the nor
Chap. n. THE PEESISTENCE OF POVEETY 291
mal rent line, produced tramps and paupers, just as like
effects from like causes have lately been evident in the
United States.
“Land which went heretofore for twenty or forty
pounds a year,” said Hugh Latimer, “now is let for fifty
or a hundred. My father was a yeoman, and had no
lands of his own; only he had a farm at a rent of three
or four pounds hy the year at the uttermpst, and there-
uppn he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men. He
had walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother, milked
thirty kine; he was able and did find the King a harness
with himself and his horse when he came to the place
that he should receive the King’s wages. I can remem-
ber that I buckled his harness when he went to Black-
heath Field. He kept me to school; he married my
sisters with five pounds apiece, so that he brought them
up in godliness and fear of God.. He kept hospitality
for his neighbors and some alms he gave to the poor.
And all this he did of the same farm, where he that now
hath it payeth sixteen pounds rent or more by year, and
is not able to do anything for his Prince, for himself,
uor his children, nor to give a cup of drink to the poor.”
^ “In this way,” said Sir Thomas More, referring to the
ejectment of small farmers which characterized this ad-
vance of rent, “it comes to pass that these poor wretches,
inen, women, husbands, orphans, widows, parents with
little children, householders greater in number than in
'W'ealth, all of these emigrate from their native fields^
■vvithout knowing where to go.”
And so from the stuff of the Latimers and Mores — ■ ,
frorn the sturdy spirit that amid the flames of the Ox'^
lord stake cried, “Play the man, Master Ridley!” and
the mingled strength and sweetness that neither pros-
perity could taint nor the ax of the executioner abash
—were evolved' thieves and vagrants, the mass of crimi-
nality and pauperism that still blights the innermost
292
Book V.
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
petals and preys a gnawing worm at the root of Eng-
land's rose.
But it were as well to cite historical illustrations of
the attraction of gravitation. The principle is as uni-
versal and as obvious. That rent must reduce wages, is
as clear as that the greater the vsub tractor the less the
remainder. That rent, does reduce wages, any one,
wherever situated, can see by merely looking around
him.
There is no mystery as to the cause which so suddenly
and so largely raised w'ages in California in 1849, and
in Australia in 1852. It was- the discovery of the placer-
mines in xmappropriated land to which labor was free
that raised the wages of cooks in San Francisco restau-
rants to $500 a month, and left ships to rot in the har-
bor without officers or crew. until their owners would
consent to pay rates that in any other part of the globe
seemed fabulous. Had-.these mines been on appropri-
ated land, or had they been immediately monopolized so
that, rent could have arisen, it would have been land
values that wnuld'have leaped u'pwnrd, not wnges. The
Comstock lode has been richer than the placers, but the
Comstock lode was readily monopolized,, and it is only
by virtue of the strong organization of the. Miners’ As-
sociation and the ' fears of- the damage which it might
do, that, enables men to get four hollars a da3’- for par-
boiling themselves two thousand feet underground,
where the air -that they breathe -must be pumped down
to them. The wealth of the Comstock lode has added
to rent. The selling price of these mines runs up into
hundreds, of millions, -and it, has • produced individual
fortuiies whose monthly . returns can -be estimated pnly
in hundreds of thousands, if not in - millions. Nor is
.there any mystery about the cause which has operated
to reduce wages in California -from , the -maximum of the
early days to very nearly a level - with wages in the
Chap. 11. ^
THE PEKSISTENCE OF POVERTY
293
Eastern States, and that is still operating to reduce
them. The productiveness of labor has not decreased,
on the contrary it has increased, as I have before shown;'
but, out of what it produces labor has now to pay rent.
As the placer deposits were exhausted, labor had to re-
port to the deeper mines and to agricultural land, but'
monopolization of these being permitted, men now walk
the' streets of San Francisco ready to go to work foi-
almost anything — for natural opportunities are now no
longer free to labor.
The truth is self-evident. Put to any one capable of
consecutive thought this question:
‘Suppose there should arise from the English Chan-
iiel or the German Ocean a No-man’s land on which
comruon labor to an unlimited amount should be able
■to make ten shillings a day and which should remain
unappropriated and of free access, like the commons
'^hich once comprised so large a part of English soil.
What would be the effect upon wages in England?”
He would at once tell you that common wages
throughout England must soon increase to ten shillings
a day.
And in response to another question, “What would be
the effect on rents?” he would at a moment’s reflection
Say that rents must necessarily fall; and if he thought
out the next step he would tell you that all this would
happen without any very large part of English labor be-
mg diverted to the new natural opportunities, or the
mrms and direction of industry being much changed;
only that kind of production being abandoned which
uow yields to labor and to landlord together less than
labor could secure on the new opportunities. The great
^■ise in wages would be at the expense of rent.
Take now the same man or another — some hard-
beaded business man, who has no theories, but knows
to make money. Say to him: “Here is a littk
294
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
Book V.
village; in ten years it will be a great city — ^in ten years
the railroad will have taken the place of the stage coach,
the electric light of the candle; it will abound with
all the machinery and improvements that so enormously
multiply the effective power of labor. Will, in ten
years, interest be any higher?'^
He will tell you, ^oh’
“Will the wages of common labor be any higher; will
it be easier for a man w'ho has nothing but his labor to
make an independent living?’’
He will tell 3’'ou, “No; the wages of common labor
will not be any higher; on the contrary, all the chances
are that they will be lower; it will not be easier for the
mere laborer to make an independent living; the chances
are that it will be harder.”
“What, then, will be higher?”
“Hent; the value of land. Go, get yourself a piece
of ground, and hold possession.”
And if, under such circumstances, you take his ad-
vice, 3'ou need do nothing more. You may sit down and
smoke your pipe; you may lie around like the iazzaroni
of Naples or the leperbs of Mexico; you may go up in
a balloon, or down a, hole in the ground; and without
doing one stroke of work, without adding one iota to the
wealth of the community, in ten years you will be rich I
In the new city you may have a luxurious mansion; but
among its public buildings will be an almshouse.
In all our long investigation we have been advancing
to this simple truth: That as land is necessary to the
exertion of labor in the production of wealth, to com-
mand the land which is necessary to labor, is to com-
mand all the-fruits of labor save enough to enable labor
to exist. We have been advancing as through an
enemy’s country, in which every step must be secured,
every position fortiUcd, and eve^ by-path ei^lored;
for this simple truth, in its application to social and
Chap. II.
THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY
295
political problems, is hid from the great masses of men
partly by its very simplicity, and in greater part by
widespread fallacies and erroneous habits of thought
which lead them to look in every direction but the right
one for an explanation of the evils which oppress and
threaten the civilized world. And back of these elab-
orate fallacies and misleading theories is an active,
energetic power, a power that in every country, be its
political forms what they may, writes laws and molds
thought — the power of a vast and dominant pecuniarv
interest.
But so simple and so clear is this truth, that to see it
fully once is always to recognize it. There are pictures
■which, though looked at again and again, present only a
confused labyrinth of lines or scroll work — a landscape,
trees, or something of the kind — until once the attention
IS called to the fact that these things make up a face
cr a figure. This relation once recognized, is always
afterward clear. It is so in this case. In the light of
this truth all social facts group themselves in an orderly
relation, and the most diverse phenomena are seen to
spring from one great principle. It is not in the rela-
tions of capital and labor; it is not in the pressure of
population against subsistence, that an explanation of
the unequal development of our civilization is to be
fpund. The great cause of inequality in the distribu*
^on of wealth is inequality in the ownership of land,
The ownership of land is the great fundamental fact
which ultimately determines the social, the political, and
consequently the intellectual and moral condition of a
people. And it must be so. For land is the habitation
ef man, the storehouse upon which he must draw for
his needs, the material to which his labor must be
applied for the supply of all his desires; for even the
products of the sea cannot be taken, the light of the
sun enjoyed, or any of the forces of nature utilized, '
294
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
Booh y.
village; in ten years it will be a great city — in ten years
the railroad will have taken the place of the stage coach,
the electric light of the candle; it will abound with
all the machinery and improvements that so enormous y
multiply the effective power of labor. Will, in ten
years, interest be any higher?”
He will tell j'ou, “Ho!” ' ..
“Will the wages of common labor be any higher; wii
it be easier for a man who has nothing but his labor o
make an independent living?”
He will tell you, “No; the w’ages of common lab
will not be any higher; on the contrary all the chances
are that they will be lower; it will not be ,
mere laborer to make an independent living; the cha
are that it will be harder.
“What, then, will be higher?” ^ -
“Rent; the value of land. Go, get yourself P
of ground, and hold possession.”
And if, under such circumstances, you \
vice, you need do nothing more. You may
smoke your pipe; ay go up io
of Naples or the leperos of Mexico, ^thout
a ballLn, or down a hole in the ground; wn^ou^
doing one stroke of work, vuthout adding one
wealth of the community, in ten but
In the new city you may have ajuxun^s inamion,
among its public buildings will be an - advancing
In III our long investiption we the
to this simple truth: That as land is ^aiU'
exertion of labor in the P^oductmn ^f wea th,
mand the land which enable labor
mand all the fruits of labor „ a^ through an
to exist. We have been ^ be secured,
enemy’s country, V-pa^h eiqilored;
every position fortm-d, ^nnPeation to social and
for this simple truth, in its application
Chap. II.
THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY
295
political problems, is hid from the great masses of men
partly by its very simplicity, and in greater part by
widespread fallacies and erroneous habits of thought
which lead them to look in every direction but the right
one for an explanation of the evils which oppress and
threaten the civilized world. And back of these elab-
orate fallacies and misleading theories is an active,
energetic power, a power that in every country, be its
political forms what they may, writes laws and molds
thought — ^the power of a vast and dominant pecuniarv
interest.
But so simple and so clear is this truth, that to see it
fully once is always to recognize it. There are pictures
which, though looked at again and again, present only a
confused labyrinth of lines or scroll work — a landscape,
trees, or something of the kind — until once the attention
IS called to the fact that these things make up a face
or a figure. This relation once recognized, is always
afterward clear. It is so in this case. In the light of
this truth all social facts group themselves in an orderly
relation, and the most diverse phenomena are seen to
spring from one great principle. It is not in the rela-
. tions of capital and labor; it is not in the pressure of
population against subsistence, that an explanation of
the unequal development of our civilization is to be
found. The great cause of inequality in the distribu’
bon of wealth is inequality in the ownership of land,
ihe ownership of land is the great fundamental fact
^hich ultimately determines the social, the political, and
consequently the intellectual and moral condition of a
people. And it must be so. For land is the habitation
of man, the storehouse upon which he must draw for
C'll his needs, the material to which his labor must be
applied for the supply of all his desires; for even the
■products of the sea cannot be taken, the light of the
®on enjoyed, or any of the forces of nature utilized,
294
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
Book V.
village ; in ten years it will be a great city — in ten years
the railroad will have taken the place of the stage coach,
the electric light of the candle; it will abound wi^
all the machinery and improvements that so enormous y
multiply the effective powder of labor. Will, in ten
years, interest be any higher?"
He will tell jmu, “No!" ,
“Will the wages of common labor be any higher; wii
it be easier for a man w'ho has nothing but his labor o
make an independent living?"
He will tell you, “No; the wages of common lab
will not be any higher; on the contrary, all the chance
are that they will be lower; it will not be
mere laborer to make an independent living; e
are that it will be harder."
“What, then, will be higher?" ' -
“Rent; the value of land. Go, get yourself P
of ground, and hold possession."
And if, under such circumstances, you take h s
vice, you’need do nothiog n>ore. You may dojjn^
smoke your pipe; you may lie around 1
of Naples or the Ja^without
a balloon, or down a hole m the ground,
doing one stroke of work, without adding ^ j
wealth of the community, in ten lion; but
In the new city you may have
among its public buildings will ® , advancing
In all our long investiption we have been adva^
to this simple truth: That as land is .oiu-
exertion of labor in the produc i ^
mand the land which is to enable labor
mand all the fruits of labor save enough an
to exist. We have been „ust be secured,
enemy’s country Vpath explored;
every position fortm-d, ^nnhcation to social and
for this simple truth, m its application
Chap. II. THE PEESISTENGE OF POVERTY 295
political problems, is hid from the great masses of men
partly by its very simplicity, and in greater part by
widespread fallacies and erroneous habits of thought
which lead them to look in every direction but the right
one for 'an explanation of the evils which oppress and
threaten the civilized w^orld. And back of these elab-
orate fallacies and misleading theories is an active,
energetic power, a power that in every country, be its
political forms what they may, writes laws and molds
thought — ^the power of a vast and dominant pecuniary
interest.
But so simple and so clear is this truth, that to see it
fully once is always to recognize it. There are pictures
which, though looked at again and again, present only a
confused labyrinth of lines or scroll work — a landscape,
trees, or something of the kind — ^until once the attention
is called to the fact that these things make up a face
or a figure. This relation once recognized, is always
afterward clear. It is so in this case. In the light of
this truth all social facts group themselves in an orderly
relation, and the most diverse phenomena are seen to
spring from one great principle. It is not in the rela-
tions of capital and labor; it is not in the pressure of
population against subsistence, that an explanation of
the unequal development of our civilization is to be
found. The great cause of inequality in the distribu*
tion of wealth is inequality in the ownership of land.
The ownership of land is the great fundamental fact
which ultimately determines the social, the political, and
consequently the intellectual and moral condition of a
people. And it must be so. For land is the habitation
of man, the storehouse upon which he must draw for
all his needs, the material to which his labor must be
applied for the supply of all his desires; for even the
products of the sea cannot be taken, the light of the
sun enjoyed, or any of the forces of nature utilized,
296
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
Booh V.
without the use of land or its products- On the land we
urc born, from it w live, to it w'e return again — children
of the soil as truly as is the blade of grass or the flower
of the field. Take aw^ay from man all that belongs to
land, and he is but a disembodied spirit. Material
progress cannot rid us of our dependence upon land, i
can but add to the pow'er of producing wealth from
land; and hence, when land is monopolized, it mig
go on to infinity without increasing wages or improving
the condition of those who have but their labor. ,
but add to the value of land and the power which im
possession gives. Everywhere, in all times, among an
peoples, the possession of land is the base of aristocr y.
the foundation of great fortunes, the source of po
As said the Brahmins, ages ago—
“To whomsoever
belong the fruits of
mad with pride are
the soil at any time belongs, to Urn
it. White parasols and elephants
the flowers of a grant of land.
BOOK VI
THE REMEDY
CHAPTER L— INSUFFICIENCY OF REMEDIES CURRENTLY AD
VOCATED
CHAPTER n.— THE TRUE REMEDY
A -new and fair division of the goods and rights of this world
should be the main object of those who conduct human affairs.—
De Tocqueville.
When the object is to raise the permanent condition of a peo-
ple, small means do not merely produce small effects; they
produce no effect at all. — John Stuart Mill
CHAPTER I
INSUFFICIENCY OF REMEDIES CURRENTLY ADVOCATED
In tracing to its source the cause of increasing poverty
amid advancing wealth, we have discovered the remedy ;
but before passing to that branch of our subject it will
be well to review the tendencies or remedies which are
currently relied on or advocated The remedy to which
our conclusions point is at once radical and simple — so
radical that, on the one side, it will not l)e fairly consid-
ered so long as any faith remains in the efficacy of less
caustic measures', so simple that, on the other side, its
real efficacy and comprehensiveness are likely to be over-
looked, until the effect of more elaborate measures is
estimated.
The tendencies and measures which current literature
and discussions show to be more or less relied on or ad-
vocated as calculated to relieve poverty and distress
among the masses may be divided into six classes. I do
not mean that there are so many distinct parties or
schools of thought, but merely that, for the purpose of
our inquiry, prevailing opinions and proposed measures
may be so grouped for review. Remedies which for the
sake of greater convenience and clearness we shall con-
sider separately are often combined in thought.
There are many persons who still retain a comfortable
belief that material progress will ultimately extirpate
poverty, and there are many who look to prudential re-
straint uppn the increase of population as the most
efficacious means, but the fallacy of these ^dews has
299
300
THE REMEDY
Booi VL
alread}” been siifficiGntly sIiowd. I^ct us nov/ cousidGr
what may be hoped for:
I. From greater economy in government.
II. From the better education of the working classes
and improved habits of industry and thrift.
III. From combinations of workmen for the advance
of wages,
IV. From the co-operation of labor and capital.
V. From go\’’ernmental direction and interference. .
VI. From a more general distribution of land.
Under these six heads I think we may in essential form
review all hopes and propositions for the relief of social
distress short of the simple but far-reaching measure
which I shall propose.
J. — From Greater Economy in Government
Until a very few years ago it was an article of faith
with Americans — a belief shared by European liberals —
. that the poverty of the doum-trodden masses of the Old
World was due to aristocratic and monarchical institu-
tions! This ^belief has rapidly passed away with the
appearance in the United States, under republican insti-
tutions, of social distress of the same kind, if not of the
same intensity, as that prevailing in Europe. But social
distress is still largely attributed to the immense burdens
which existing governments impose — ^the great debts,
the military and naval establishments, the extravagance
which is characteristic as well of republican as of mon-
archical rulers, and especially, characteristic of the ad-
ministration of great cities. To these must be added,
in the United States, the robbery involved in the protec-
tive tariff, which for every twenty-five cents it puts in
the treasury takes a. dollar and it may be four or .five
out of the pocket of the consumer. Now, there seems
to be an evident connection between the immense sums
Chap. 1. INSUFFICIENCY OP PROPOSED REMEDIES 303
thus taken from the people and the privations of the
lower classes, and it is upon a superficial view, natural
to suppose that a reduction in the enormous burdens
thus uselessly imposed would make it easier for the poor-
est to get a living. But a consideration of the matter in
the light of the economic principles heretofore traced
out will show that this would not be the effect. A re-
duction in the amount taken from the aggregate produce
of a community by taxation would be simply equivalent
to an increase in the power of net production. It would
in effect add to the productive power of labor just as
do the increasing density of population and improve-
ment in the arts. And as the a‘dvantage in the one case
goes, and must go, to the owners of land,~in increased
rent, so would the advantage in the other.
From the produce of the labor and capital of England
are now supported the burden of an immense debt, an
Established Church, an expensive royal family, a large
number of sinecurists, a great army and great navy.
Suppose the debt repudiated, the Church disestablished,
the royal family set adrift to make a living for them'
selves, the sinecurists cut off, the army disbanded, the
officers and men of the navy discharged and the ships
sold. An enormous reduction in taxation would thus
become possible. There would be a great .addition to
the net produce which remains to be distributed among
the parties to production. But it would be only such an
addition as improvement in the arts has been for a long
time constantly making, and not so great an addition as
steam and machinery have made -within the last twenty
or thirty years. And as these additions have not allevi-
ated pauperism, but have only increased rent, so would
this. English land owners would reap the whole benefit.
I will not dispute that if all these things could be done
suddenly, and without the destruction and expense in-
volved in a revolution, there naight be a temporary im-
302
THE liEMEDT
BookVx.
provemenb in the condition of the lowest class; but such
a sudden and peaceable reform is manifestly impossible.
And if it were, any temporary improvement would, by
the process we now see going on in the United States,
be ultimately swallowed up by increased land values.
And, so, in the United States, if we were to reduce
public expenditures to the lowest possible point, and meet
them bj’' revenue taxation, the benefit could certainly
not be greater than that which railroads have brought. .
There would be more wealth left in the hands of the
people as a whole, just as the railroads have put more
wealth in the hands of the people as a whole, but the
same inexorable laws would operate as to its distribu-
tion. The condition of those who Jive by their labor
would not ultimately be improved.
A dim consciousness of this pervades — or, rather, is
beginning to pervade — the masses, and constitutes one
of the grave political difficulties that are closing in
around the American republic. Those who have nothing
but their labor, and especially the proletarians of the
cities — a gi’owing class — care little about the prodigality
of government, and in many cases are disposed to look
upon it as a good thing — ^^Turnishing employment,’^ or
^‘putting money in circulation.” Tweed, who robbed
New York as a guerrilla chief might levy upon a cap-
tured town (and who was but a type of the new banditti
who are grasping the government of all our cities), was
undoubtedly popular with a majority of the voters,
though his thieving was notorious, and his spoils were
blazoned in big diamonds and lavish personal expendi-
ture. , After his indictment, he was triumphantly elected
to the Senate; and, even when a recaptured fugitive,
v/as frequently cheered on his way from court to prison.
He had robbed .the public treasur}^ of many millions,
but the proletarians felt that he had not robbed them.
And the verdict of political .economy is the same as
theirs.'
ahtv. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 30^
Let me -be clearly understood. ' I do not say that gov-
ernmental economy is not desirable; but simply that re-
duction in the expenses of government can have no
direct effect in extirpating poverty and increasing wages,
so long as land is monopolized.
Although this is true, yet even with sole reference to
the interests of the lowest class, no effort should be
spared to keep down useless expenditures. The more
complex and extravagant government becomes, the more
it gets to be a- power distinct from and independent of
the people, and the more difficult does it become to bring
questions of real public policy to a popular decision.
Look at our elections in the United States — ^upon what
do they turn? The most momentous problems are press-
ing upon us, yet so great is the amount of money in poli-
tics, so large are the personal interests involved, that the
most important questions of government are but little
considered. The average American voter has prejudices,
party feelings, general notions of a certain kind, but he
gives to the fundamental questions of government not
much more thought than a street-car horse does to the
profits of the line. Were this not the case, so many
hoary abuses could not have survived and so many new
ones been added. Anything that tends to make govern-
ment simple and inexpensive tends to put it under
control of the people and to bring questions of real im-
portance to the front. But ho reduction in the expenses
of government can of itself cure or mitigate the evils
that arise from a constant tendency to the unequal dis-
tribution of wealth.
— From the Diffusion of Education and Improved
Habits of Industry and Thrift
There is, and always has been, a widespread belief
among the more comfortable classes that the poverty and
suffering of the masses are due to their lack of industry.
304
THE REMEDY
Book VI.
frugality, and intelligence. This belief, which at once
soothes the sense of responsibility and flatters by its
suggestion of superiority, is probably even more prev-
alent in countries like the United States, where all men
are politically equal, and where, owing to the newness of
society, the differentiation into classes has been of indi-
viduals rather than of families, than it is in older coun-
tries, where the lines of separation have been longer, and
are more sharply, dravm. It is but natural for those
who can trace their own better circumstances to the
superior industry and frugality that gave them a start,
and the superior intelligence that enabled them to take
advantage of eveiy opportunity,* to imagine that those
who remain poor do so simply from Jack of these quali-
ties.
But whoever has grasped the laws of the distribution
of wealth, as in previous chapters they have been traced
out, will see the mistake in this notion. The fallacy is
similar to that which would be involved in the assertion
that every one of a number of competitors might win a
race. That any one might is true; that every one might
is impossible.
Tor, as soon as land acquires a value, wages, as we
have seen, do not depend upon the real earnings or prod-
uct of labor, but upon what is left to labor after rent is •
taken out; and when land is all monopolized, as it is
everywhere except in the newest communities, rent must
drive wages down to the point at which the poorest paid
class will be just able to live and reproduce, and thus
wages are forced to a minimum fixed by what is called
the standard of comfort — that is, the. amount of neces-
saries and comforts which habit leads the working classes
* To say nothing of superior want of conscience, _ which is
often the determining quality which makes a millionaire out o
one who otherwise might have been a poor man.
Chap. I. rNSTJFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 305
to demand as the lowest on which they will consent to
maintain their numbers. This being the case, industry,
skill, frugality, and intelligence can avail the individual
only in so far as they are superior to the general level —
just as in a race speed can avail the runner only in so
far as it exceeds that of his competitoi's. If one man
work harder, or with superior skill or intelligence than
ordinarj^ he wall get ahead; but if the average of in-
dustry, skill, or intelligence be brought up to the higher
point, the increased intensity of application will secure
but the old rate of wmges, and he w'ho would get ahead
must work harder still.
One individual may save money from his wages by liv-,
mg as Dr. Franklin did when, during his apprenticeship
and early journeyman days, he concluded to practice
vegetarianism; and many poor families might be made
more comfortable by being taught to prepare the cheap
dishes to which Franklin tried to limit the appetite of
his employer Keimer, as a condition to his acceptance
of the position of confuter of opponents to the new re-'
ligion of which Keimer wished to become the prophet,*”
but if the working classes generally came to live in that
way, wages would ultimately fall in proportion, and who-
ever wished to get ahead by the practice of economy, or
to mitigate poverty by teaching it, would be compelled
to devise some still cheaper mode of keeping soul and
body together. If, under existing .conditions, American
mechanics would come down to the Chinese standard of
living, they would ultimately have to come down to the
Chinese standard of wages; or if English laborers would
content themselves with the rice diet and scanty clothing
* Franklin, in his inimitable way, relates how Keimer finally
broke his resolution and ordering a roast pig invited two lady
friends to dine with him, but the pig being brought in before
the company arrived, Keimer could not resist' the temptation
and ate it all himself.
306
THE REMEDY
Booh VI.
of the Bengalee, labor would soon be as ill paid in Eng-
land as in Bengal. The introduction of the potato into
Ireland was expected to improve the condition of the
poorer classes, by increasing the difference between
the wages they received and the cost of their living. The
consequences that did ensue were a rise of rent and a '
lowering of wages, and, with the potato blight,’ the rav-
ages of famine among a population that had already
reduced its standard of comfort so low that the next step
was starvation.
And, so, if one individual work more hours than the
average, he will increase his wages; but the wages of all
cannot be increased in this way. ft is notorious that in
occupations where working hours are long, wages are not
higher than where working hours are shorter; generally
the reverse, for the longer the working day, the more
helpless does the laborer become — the less time has he to
look around him and ' develop other powers than those
called forth by his work; the less becomes' his ability to
change his occupation or to take advantage of circum-
stances. And, so, the individual workman who gets his
wife and ‘Children to assist him may thus increase his in-
come; but in occupations where it has become habitual
for the wife and children of the laborer to supplement
his work, it is notorious that the wages earned by the
whole family do not on the average exceed those of the
head of the family in occupations where it is usual for
him only to work. Swiss family labor in watch making
competes in cheapness with American machinery. The
Bohemian cigar makers of New York, who work, men,
women, and children, in their tenement-house rooms,
have reduced the prices of cigar making to less than the
Chinese in San Francisco were getting. ■
These general facts are well kno-^vn. They are fully
recognized in standard politico-economic works, where,
however, they are explained upon the Malthusian theory
\hav. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 307
)f the tendency of population to multiply up to the limit
)f subsistence. The true explanation, as I have suffi-
jiently shown, is in the tendency of rent to reduce wages.
As to the effects of education, it may be w^orth wdiile .
to say a few words specially, for there is a prevailing
disposition to attribute to it something like a magical
influence. Now, education is only education in so far
as it enables a man more effectively to use his natural
powers, and.this is something that what we call educa'
tion in verj’’ great part fails to do. I remember a little
girl, pretty well along in her school geography and
astronomy, who w^as much astonished to find that the
ground in her mother’s back yard was really the surface
of file earth, and, if you talk with them, you will find
that a good deal of the knowledge of many college
graduates is much like that of the little girl. They sel-
dom think any better, and sometimes not so well as men
who have never been to college.
A gentleman wdio had spent many years in Australia,
and knew intimately the habits of the aborigines (Rev.
Dr. Bleesdale) , after giving some instances of their won-
derful skill in the use of their weapons, in foretelling
changes in the wind and weather and in trapping- the
• shyest birds, once said to me: “I think it a great mis-
take to look on these black fellows as ignorant. Their
knowledge is different from ours, but in it they are gen- -
erally better educated. As soon as they begin to toddle,
they are taught to play with little boomerangs and other
' weapons, to observe and to judge, and, when they are
old enough to take care of themselves, they are -fully able
to do so — are, in fact, in reference to the nature of their
knowledge, what I should call well-educated gentlemen;
which is more than I can say for many of our young fel-
■ lows who have had what we call the best advantages,
but who enter upon manhood unable to do anything
either for themselves or for others.”
308
THE REMEDY
Book VI.
Be this as it may, it is evident that intelligence, "w^hich
is or should be the aim of education, until it induces and
enables the masses to discover and remove the cause of
the unequal distribution of wealth, can operate upon
wages only by increasing the effective power of labor.
It has the same effect as increased skill or industry.
And it can raise the wages of the individual only in so
far as it renders him superior to others. When to read
and w'rite were rare accomplishments, a clerk commanded
high respect and large wages, but now the ability to read
and vTite has become so nearly universal as to give no
advantage. Among the Chinese the ability to read and
Write seems absolutely universal, but wages in China
touch the lowest possible point. The diffusion of intel-
ligence, except as it may make men discontented with a
state of things which condemns producers to a life of •
toil while non-producers loll in luxury, cannot tend to
raise wages generally, or in any way improve the condi-
tion of the lowest class — ^the “mud-sills'' of society, as
a Southern Senator once called them— who must rest on
the soil, no matter how high the superstructure may be
carried. No increase of the effective power of labor can
increase general wages, so long as rent swallows up all
the gain. This is not merely a deduction from princi-
ples. It is the fact, proved by experience. The growth
of knowledge and the progress of invention have multi-
plied ,the effective power ^f labor over, and over again
without increasing wages. In England there are over a
million paupers. ' In the United States almshouses are
increasing and wages are decrea.sing.
It is true that greater industry and skill, greater pru-
dence, and a higher intelligence, are, as a rule, found
associated with a better material condition of the w'ork-
ing classes; but that this is effect, not cause, is shown by
the relation of the facts. Wlierever the material condi-
tion of the laboring classes has been improved, im-
Chap. I. INSUmCIENCy OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 309
provement in their personal qualities has followed, and
wherever their material condition has been depressed,
deterioration in these qualities has been the result; but
nowhere can improvement in material condition be shown
as the result of the increase of industry, skill, prudence,
or intelligence in a class condemned to toil for a bare
living, though these qualities when once attained (or,
rather, their concomitant — ^the improvement in the
standard of comfort) offer a strong, and, in many cases,
a sufi&cient, resistance to the lowering of material con-
dition.
The fact is, that the qualities that raise man above
the animal are superimposed on those which he shares
with the animal, and that it is only as he is relieved
from the wants of his animal nature that his intellectual
and moral nature can grow. Compel a man to drudgery
for the necessities of animal existence, and he will lose
the incentive to industry — ^the progenitor of skill — and
will do only what he is forced to do. Make his condi-
tion such that it cannot be much worse, while there is
little hope that anything he can do will make it much
' better, and he will cease to look beyond the day. Deny
him leisure — and leisure does not mean the want of em-
ployment, but the absence of the need which forces to
uncongenial employment — and you cannot, even by run-
ning the child through a common school and supplying
the man with a newspaper, make him intelligent.
It is true that improvement in the material conditior!
of a people or class may not show immediately in mental
and moral improvement. Increased wages may at first
be taken out in idleness and dissipation. But they will
ultimately bring increased industry, skill, intelligence,
and thrift. Comparisons between different countries;
between different classes in the same country; between
the same people at different periods; and between the
same people when their conditions are changed by emi-
310
THE EEMEDY
Book VL
gration, show, as an invariable result, that the personal
qualities of which we are speaking appear as material
conditions are improved, and disappear as material con-
ditions are depressed. Poverty is the Slough of Despond
which Bunyan saw in his dream, and into which good
books may be tossed forever without result. To make
people industrious, prudent, skillful, and intelligent,
they must be relieved from want. If you would have
the slave show the virtues of the freeman, you must first
make him free.
HI. — From Combinations of Workmen
It is evident from the laws of distribution, as previ-
ously traced, that combinations of workmen can
advance wages, and this not at the expense of other
workmen, as is sometimes said, nor yet at the expense of
capital, as is generally believed; but, ultimately, at the
expense of rent. That no general advance in wages can
he secured by combination ; that any advance in particu-
lar wages thus secured must reduce other wages or the
profits of capital, or both — are ideas that spring from
the erroneous notion that wages are drawn from capital.
The fallacj’’ of these ideas is demonstrated, not alone by
the laws of distribution as we have worked them out,
but by experience, so far as it has gone. The advance
of wages in particular trades by combinations of work-
men, of which there are many examples, has nowhere
.shown any effect in lowering wages in other trades, or
in reducing the rate of profits. Except as it may affect
his fixed capital or current engagements, a diminution
of wages can benefit, and an increase of wages injure
an employer only in so far as it gives him an advantage
or puts him at a disadvantage as compared with other
employers. The employer who first succeeds in reduc-
ing the wages of his hands, or is first compelled to pay
Vhap.I. INSUFFICIENCY OP PEOPPSED REMEDIES 311
an advance, gains an advantage, or is put at a disadvan-
tage' in regard to his competitors, which ceases when
the movement includes them' also.'' So far, however, as
the change in' wages affects his contracts or stock or
hand, by changing, the relative cost of production, it ma;
be to him a real gain or loss, though this gain or loss
being purely relative, disappears when the whole com
munity is considered. And, if the change in wages work
a change in relative demand, it may render capital fixei
in machinery, buildings, or otherwise, more or les
profitable. But, in this, a new equilibrium is soo:
reached; for, especially in a progressive country, fixe-
capital is "only somewhat less mobile than circulatin
capital. If there is too little in a certain form, the tend
ency of capital to assume that form soon brings it u;
to the required amount; if there is too much, the cessa
+.ion of increment soon restores the level.
But, while a change in the rate of wages in any pai
ricular occupation may induce a change in the relativ
demand for labor, it can produce no change in -the ag
gregate demand. For instance, let us suppose that
combination of the workmen engaged in any particuls
- manufacture raise wages in one country, while a comb:
nation of employers reduce wages in the same manufac
ture in another country. If the change be great enougl
the demand, or part of the demand, in the first countr
will now be supplied by importation of such manufac
tures from the second. But, evidently, this increase i
importations of a particular kind must necessitai
either a corresponding decrease in importations c
other kinds, or a corresponding increase in exportation
For, it is only with the produce of its labor and capiti
that one country can demand, or can obtain, in exchang
the produce of the labor and capital of another. T1
• idea that the lowering of wages can increase, or the ii
crease of wages can diminish, the trade of a country'-,
312
THE REMEDY
Book VI.
as baseless as the idea that the prosperity of a country
can be increased by taxes on imports, or diminished by
the removal of restrictions on trade. If all wages in any
particular coimtry were to be doubled, that country
would continue to export and import the same things,
and in the same proportions; for exchange is determined,
not by absolute, but by relative, cost of production.
But, if wages in some branches of production were
doubled, and in others not increased, or not increased so
much, there would be a change in the proportion of the
various things imported, but no change in the proportion
between exports and imports.
While most of the objections made to the combination
of workmen for the advance of wages are thus baseless,
while the success of such combinations cannot reduce
other wages, or decrease the profits of capital, or injuri-
ously affect national prosperity, yet so great are the
difficulties in the way of the effective combinations of
laborers, that the good that can be accomplished by them
is extremely limited, while there are inherent disadvan-
tages in the process.
To raise wages in a particular occupation or occupa-
tions, which is all that any combination of workmen yet
made has been equal to attempting, is manifestly a task ,
the difficulty of which progressively increases. For the
higher are wages of any particular kind raised above
' their normal level with other wages, the stronger are
the tendencies to bring them back. Thus, if a printers'
imion, by a successful or threatened strike, raise the
wages of typesetting ten per cent, above the normal rate
• as compared with other wages, relative demand and sup-
ply are at once affected. On the one hand, there is a
tendency to a diminution of the amount of typesetting
called for; and, on the other, the higher rate of wages
tends to increase the number of compositors m ways the
strongest combination cannot altogether prevent. If the
ap. I.
INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES
313
icrease be twenty per cent., these tendencies are much
-ronger; if it is fifty per cent., they become stronger
dll, and so on. So that practically — even in countries
ke England, where the lines between different trades
re much more distinct and difficult to pass than in
ountries like the United States — ^that which trades’
nions, even when supporting each other, can do in the
ray of raising wages is comparatively little, and this
ittle, moreover, is confined to their ovm sphere, and
ioes not affect the lower stratum of unorganized la-
)orers, whose condition most needs alleviation and ulti-
nately determines that of all above them. The only
vay by .which wages could be raised to any extent and
vith any permanence by this method would be by a
general combination, such as was aimed at by the In-
ternationals, which should include laborers of all kinds.
But such a combination may be set down as practically
mpossible, for the difficulties of combination, great
mough in the most highly paid and smallest trades, be-
come greater and greater as we descend in the industrial
scale.
Nor, in the struggle of endurance, which is the only
method which combinations not to work for less than a
certain minimum have of effecting the increase of wages,
must it be forgotten who are the real parties pitted
against each other. It is not labor and capital. It is
laborers on, the one side and the owners of land on the
other. If the contest were between labor and capital,
it would be on much more equal terms. For the power
of capital to stand out is only some little greater than
that of labor. Capital not only ceases to earn anything
when not used, but it goes to waste — for in nearly all its
forms it can be maintained only by constant reproduc-
tion. But land will not starve like laborers or go to
waste like capital — its owners can w^ait. They may be
inconvenienced, it is true, but what is inconvenience to
316
THE EEMEDT
Book VI
endurance involved in a strike is, really, what it has
often been compared to— a war; and, like all war, it
lessens wealth. And the organization for it must, like
the organization for war, be tyrannical. As even the
man who would fight for freedom, must,. when he enters
an army, give up his personal freedom and become a
mere part in a great machine, so must it be with work-
men who organize for a strike. These combinations are,
therefore, necessarily destructive of the very things
which workmen seek to gain through them— wealth and
freedom.
There is an ancient Hindoo mode of compelling .the
payment of a just debt, traces of something akin to
which Sir Henry Maine has found in the laws of the
Irish Brehons. It is called, sitting dhama — ^the creditor
^seeking enforcement of his debt by sitting down at the
<door of the debtor, and refusing to eat or drink until he
ds paid. '
Like this is the method of labor combinations. In
diheir strikes, trades’ unions sit dharna. But, unlike the
Biiidoo, they have not the power of superstition to back
them.
IV. — From Co-operation
It is now, and has been for some time, the fashion to
preach co-operation as the sovereign remedy for the
^ievances of the working classes. But, unfortunately
for the efiicacy of co-operation as a remedy for social
evils, these evils, as we have seen, do not arise from any
conflict between labor and capital; and if co-operation
^ere universal, it could not raise wages or relieve pov-
gjty. This is readily seen.
Co-operation is of two kinds— co-operation in supply
and co-operation in production. How, co-operation in
yppjy, let it go as far as it may in excluding middlemen,
reduces the cost of exchanges. It is simply a device
Chav. 1. INSUFFICIENCY OF PEOPOSED EEMEDIES 317’
to save labor and eliminate risk, and its effect upon dis-
tribution can be only that of the improvements and
inventions which have in modern times so wonderfully
cheapened and facilitated exchanges — ^viz., to increase
rent. And co-operation in production is simply a rever-
sion to that form of wages which still prevails -in the
whaling service, and is there termed" a “lay.” It is the
substitution of proportionate wages for fixed wages — a
substitution of which there are occasional instances in
almost all employments; or, if the management is left to
the workmen, and the capitalist but takes his proportion
of the net produce, it is simply the system that has pre-
vailed to a large extent in European agriculture since
the days of the Roman Empire — ^the colonial or metayer
system. All that is claimed for co-operation in produc-
tion is, that it makes the workman more active and in-
dustrious—in other words, that it increases the efficiency
of labor. Thus its effect is in the same direction as the
steam engine, the cotton gin, the reaping machine — in
short, all the things in which material progress consists,
and it can produce only the same result-rviz,, the in-
crease of rent.
It is a striking proof of how first principles are ignored
m dealing with social problems, that in current economic
and semi-economic literature so much importance is at-
tached to co-operation as a means for increasing wages
■ and relieving poverty. That it can have no such general
tendency is apparent.
Waiving all the difficulties that under'J^resent condi-
tions beset co-operation either- of supply or of produc-
tion, and supposing it so extended as to supplant present
methods — ^that co-operative stores made the connection
between producer and consumer with the minimum ol
expense, and co-operative workshops, factories, farms,,
and mines, abolished the employing capitalist who pays
fixed wages, and greatly increased the efficiency of labor
314
THE REMEDY •
Booh VL
them, is destruction to capital and starvation to labor.
The agricultural laborers in certain parts of England
are now endeavoring to combine for the puipose of se-
curing an increase in their miserably low wages. If it
was capital that was receiving the enormous difference
between the real produce of their labor and the pittance
they get out of it, they would have but to make an
effective combination to secure success; for the farmers,
who are their direct employers, can afford to go without
labor but little, if any, better than the laborers can afford
to go without wages. But the farmers cannot yield
much without a reduction of rent; and thus it is between
the land owners and the laborers that the real- struggle
must come. Suppose the combination to be so thorough
as to include all agricultural laborers, and to prevent
from doing so all who might be tempted to take their
places. The laborers refuse to work except at a consid-
erable advance of wages; the farmers can give it only by
securing a considerable reduction of rent, and have no
way to back their demands except as the laborers back
theirs, by refusing' to go on with production. • If culti-
vation thus come to a dead-lock, the land owners would
lose only their rent, w'hile the land improved by lying
fallow. But the laborers would starve. And if English
laborers of all kinds v/ere united in one grand league for
a general increase of wages, the real contest would be the
same, and under the same conditions. For -wages could
not be increased except -to the decrease of rent; and in
a general dead-lock, land owners could live, while la-
borers of all sorts, must starve or emigrate. The owners
of the land of England are by virtue of their ownership
the masters of England^ So true is it that "to whomso-
ever the soil at any time belongs, to him belong the fruite
of it.” The white parasols and the^ elephants mad with
pride passed with the grant of English land, and the
people at large can never regain their power until that
:ap.I. INSUFIlCIENCy OF PROPOSED REMEDIES ■ 315
rant is resumed. Wliat is true of England, is universally
rue.
It may be said that such a dead-lock in production
ould never occur. This is true; but true only beca ’se
0 such thorough combination of labor as might produce
1 is possible. But the fixed and definite nature of land
nables land oviiers to combine much more easily and
fficiently than either laborers or capitalists. How easy
nd efficient their combination is, there are many his-
orical examples. And the absolute necessity for the
ise of land, and the certainty in all progressive countries
hat it must increase in value, produce among land
iwners, without any formal combination, all the effects
hat could be produced by the most rigorous combination
imong laborers or capitalists. Deprive a laborer of op-
)ortunity of employment, and he will soon be anxious to
;et work on any terras, but when the receding wave of
peculation leaves nominal land values clearly above
eal values, whoever has lived in a growing country
mows with what tenacity land owners hold on.
And, besides these practical difficulties in the plan of
orcing by endurance an increase of wages, there are in
>uch methods inherent disadvantages which workingmen
should not blink. I speak without prejudice, for I am
still an honorary member of the union which, while
working at my trade, I always loyally supported. But,
see: The methods by which a trade union can alone act
are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily
tyrannical. A strike, which is the only recourse by
which a trade union can enforce its demands is a de-
structive contestr— just such a contest as that' to which
an eccentric, called “The Money King,” once, in the
early days of San. Francisco, challenged a man who
had- taunted him with meanness, that they should go
down to the wharf and ’alternately toss twenty-dollar
pieces into the bay until one gave -in. The struggle., of
816
THE REMEDY
Booh VI
endurance involved in a strike is, really, what it has
often been compared to—a war; and, like all war, it
lessens wealth. And the organization for it must, like
the organization for war, be tyrannical. As even the
man who would fight for freedom, must,, when he enters
an army, give up his personal freedom and become a
mere part in a great machine, so must it be with work-
men who organize for a strike. These combinations are,
therefore, necessarily destructive of the very things
which workmen seek to gain through them — ^wealth and
freedom.
There is an ancient Hindoo mode of compelling .the
payment of a just debt, traces of something akin to
which Sir Henry Maine has found in the laws of the
Irish Brehons. It is called, sitting dhama — ^the creditor
:seeking enforcement of his debt by sitting down at the
•door of the debtor, and refusing to eat or drink until he
is paid.
Like this is the method of labor combinations. In
iiheir strikes, trades’ unions sit dharna. But, unlike the
Sindoo, they have not the power of superstition to back
them.
IV. — From Co-'operation
It is now, and has been for some time, the fashion to
preach co-operation as the sovereign remedy for the
grievances of the working classes. But, unfortunately
for the efficacy of co-operation as a remedy for social
evils, these evils, as we have seen, do not arise from any
conflict between labor and capital; and if co-operation
were imiversal, it could not raise wages or relieve pov-
erty. This is readily seen.
Co-operation is of two kinds— co-operation in supply
and co-operation. in production. How, co-operation in
supply, let it go as far as it may in excluding middlemen,
only reduces the cost of exchanges. It is simply a device
Chap. I. rNSTJFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 31V
to save labor and eliminate risk, and its effect upon dis-
tribution can be only that of the improvements and
inventions which have in modern times so wonderfully
cheapened and facilitated exchanges — ^viz., to increase
rent. And co-operation in production is simply a rever-
sion to that form of wages which still prevails in the
whaling service, and is there termed' a “lay.” It is the
substitution of proportionate wages for fixed wages — a
substitution of which there are occasional instances in
almost all employments; or, if the management is left to
the workmen, and the capitalist but takes his proportion
of the net produce, it is simply the system that has pre-
vailed to a large extent in European agriculture since
the days of the Roman Empire — ^the colonial or metayer
system. All that is claimed for co-operation in produc-
tion is, that it makes the workman more active and in-
dustrious—^in other words, that it increases the efficiency
of labor. Thus its effect is in the same direction as the
steam engine, the cotton gin, the reaping machine — in
short, all the things in which material progress consists,
and it can produce only the same result— viz., the in-
crease of rent.
It is a striking proof of how first principles are ignored
m dealing with social problems, that in current economic
and semi-economic literature so much importance is at-
tached to co-operation as a means for increasing wages
■ and relieving poverty. That it can have no such general
tendency is apparent.
Waiving all the difficulties that undent-present condi-
tions beset co-operation either of supply or of produc-
tion, and supposing it so extended as to supplant present
methods — that co-operative stores made the connection
between producer and consumer with the minimum ol
expense, and co-operative workshops, factories, farms,
and mines, abolished the employing capitalist who pays
fixed wages, and greatly increased the efficiency of labor
318
THE REMEDY
Book VI
—what then? Why, simply that it would become pos-
sible to produce the same amount of wealth with less
labor, and consequently that the owners of land, the
source of all wealth, could command a greater amount
of wealth for the use of their land. This is not a matter
of mere theory ; it is proved by experience and by exist-
ing facts. Improved methods and improved machinery-
have the same effect that co-operation aims at — of reduc-
ing the cost of bringing commodities to the consumer
and increasing the efficiency of labor, and it is in these
respects that the older countries have the advantage of
new settlements. But, as e^q^erience has amply shown,
improvements in the methods and machinery of produc-
tion and exchange have no tendency to improve the con- .
dition of the lowest class, and w? ges . are lower and
poverty deeper where exchange goes on at the minimum
of cost and production has the benefit of the best ma--
chinery. The advantage but adds to rent.
But suppose co-operation between producers and land
owners? That would simply amount to. the payment of
rent in kind — ^the same system under which much land
is rented in California and the Southern States where
the land owner gets a share of the crop. Save as a mat-
ter of computation it in no wise differs from the system
which prevails in England of a fixed money rent. Call
it co-operation, if you choose, the terms of the co- ,
operation would still be fixed by the laws which de- .
termine rent, and wherever land was monopolized,
increase in productive power would simply give the own-
ers of the land the power to demand a larger share.
That co-operation is by so many believed to be the
solution of the “labor question" arises from the fact that,
where it has been tried, it has in many instances im-
proved perceptibly the condition of those . immediat ely
engaged in it. But this is due simply to the fact that
these cases are isolated. Just as, industry, economy, or
Chav. I. ■ INSUFFICIENCY OF PEOPOSED REMEDIES 319
skill may improve the condition of the workmen, who
possess them in superior degree, but cease to have this
effect when improvement in these respects becomes gen-
eral, so a special advantage in procuring supplies, or a
special efficiency given to some labor, may secure advan-
tages which would be lost as soon as these improvements
became so general as to affect the general relations of
distribution. And the truth is, that, save possibly in
educational effects, co-operation can produce no general
results that competition will not produce. Just as the
cheap-for-cash stores have a similar effect upon prices
as the co-operative supply associations, so does competi-
tion in production lead to a similar adjustment of forces
and division of proceeds as would co-operative produc-
tion. That increasing productive power does not add
to the reward of labor, is not because of competition,
but because competition is one-sided. Land, without
which there can be no production, is monopolized, and
tl^e competition of producers for its use forces wages to
a minimum and gives all the advantage of increasing
productive power to land owners, in higher rents and
increased land values. Destroy this monopoly, and com-
petition could exist only to accomplish 'the end which
co-operation aims at — ^to give to each what he fairly
earns. .Destroy this monopoly, and industry must be-
come the co-operation of equals.
V. — From Govermnental Direction and Interference
The limits within which I wish to keep this book will
not permit an examination in detail of the inethods in
which it is proposed to mitigate or extirpate poverty by
governmental regulation of industry and accumulation,
and which in their most thorough-going form are called
socialistic. Nor is it necessary, for the same defects
attach to them all. These are the substitution of gov-
320
THE REMEDY
Book VI.
ernmental direction for the play of individual action, and
the attempt to secure by restriction what can better be
secured by freedom. As to the truths that are involved
in socialistic ideas I shall have something to say here-
after ; but it is evident that whatever savors of regulation
and restriction is in itself bad, and should not be re-
sorted to if any other mode of accomplishing the same
end presents itself. For instance, to take one of the
simplest and mildest of the class of measures I refer to
— a graduated tax on incomes. The object at which it
aims, the reduction or prevention of immense concen-
. trations of wealth, is good ; but this means involves the
employment of a large number of officials clothed with
inquisitorial powers; temptations to bribery, and per-
jury, and all other means of evasion, which beget a
demoralization of opinion, and put a premium upon un-
scrupulousness and a tax upon conscience; and, finally,
just in proportion as the tax accomplishes its. effect, a
lessening in the incentive to the accumulation of wealth,
which is one of the strong forces of industrial progress.
While, if the elaborate schemes for regulating every-
thing and finding a place for everybody could be carried
out, we should have a state of society resembling that of
ancient Peru, or that which, to their eternal honor, the
Jesuits instituted and so long maintained in Paraguay-
I will not say that such a state as this is not a better
social state than that to which we now seem to be tend-
ing, for' in ancient Peru, though production went on
under the greatest disadvantages, from the want of iron
and the domestic animals, yet there was no such thing as
want, and the people- went to their work with songs. .
But this it is unnecessary to discuss. Socialism in any-
thing approaching such a form, modern society - cannot
successfully attempt. The only force that has_ ever
proved competent for it — a strong and definite religious
faith — is wanting and is daily growing less. We have
Ckav. /. INSUFFICIENCY O'F PROPOSED REMEDIES 321
passed out of the socialism of the tribal state, and can-
not re-enter it again except by a retrogression that
would involve anarchy and perhaps barbarism. Our
governments, as is already plainly evident, would break
down in the attempt. Instead of an intelligent award of
duties and earnings, we should have a Roman distribu-
tion of Sicilian corn, and the demagogue would soon
become the imperator.
The ideal of socialism is grand and noble; and it is, I
am convinced, possible of realization; but such a state
of society cannot be manufactured — it must grow. So-
ciet}’ is an organism, not a machine. It can live only by
the individual life of its parts. And in the free and
natural development of all the parts will be secured the
harmony of the whole. All that is necessary to social
regeneration is included in the motto of those Russian
patriots sometimes called Nihilists — “Land and Lib-
erty!”
VI. — Frovi a More General Distribution of Land
There is a rapidly growing feeling that the tenure of
land is in some manner connected with the social dis-
tress which manifests itself in the most progressive
countries; but this feeling as yet mostly shows itself in
propositions which look to the more general division of
landed property — in England, free trade in land, tenant
right, or the equal partition of landed estates among
heirs ; in the United States, restrictions upon the size of
individual holdings. It has been also proposed in Eng-
. land that the state should buy out the landlords, and in
the United States that grants of money should be made
to enable the settlements of colonies upon public lands.
The former proposition let us pass for the present; the
, latter, so far as its distinctive feature is concerned, falls
into the category of the measures considered in the last
322
THE REMEDY
jScok 7L
section. It needs no argument to show to what abuses
and demoralization grants of public money or credit
would lead.
How what the English writers call “free trade in land”
the removal of duties and restrictions upon convey-
ances— could facilitate the division of ownership in agri-
cultural land, I cannot see, though it might to some
extent have that effect as regards town property. The
removal of restrictions upon buying and selling would
merely permit the ownership of land to assume more
quickly the form to which it tends. Now, that the tend-
ency in Great Britain is to concentration is shown by the
fact that, in spite of the difficulties interposed by the
cost of transfer, land ownership has been and is steadily
concentrating there, and that this tendency is a general
one is shown by the fact that the same process of con-
centration is obsei^mble in the United States. I say
this unhesitatingly in regard to the United States, al-
though statistical tables are sometimes quoted to show
a different tendency. But how, in such a country as the
United States, the ownership of land may be really con-
centrating, w^hile census tables show rather a diminution
in the average size of holdings, is readily seen. As land
is brought into use, and, with the growth of population,
passes from a lower to a higher or intenser use, the size
of holdings tends to diminish. A small stock range
ymuld be a large farm, a small farm would be a large
orchard, vineyard, nursery, or vegetable garden, and, a '
patch of land which would be small even for these pur-
poses .would make a very large city property. Thus,
the growth of population, which puts lands to higher or
intenser uses, tends naturally to reduce the size of hold-
ings, by a process very marked in new countries; but
with this may go on a tendency to the concentration of
(and ownership, -which, though not revealed by .tables
which show the average size of holdings, is just as clearly
Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 323
seen. Average holdings of one acre in a city may show
a much greater concentration of land ownership than
average holdings of 640 acres in a newly settled town-
ship. I refer to this to show the fallacy in the deductions
drawn from the tables which are frequently paraded in
the United States to show that land monopoly is an evil
that will cure itself. On the contrary, it is obvious that
the proportion of land owners to the whole population
is constantly decreasing.
And that there is in the United States, as there is in
Great Britain, a strong tendency to the concentration' of
land ownership in agriculture is clearly seen. As, in
England and Ireland, small farms are being thrown into
larger ones, so in New England, according to the reports
of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, is the
size of farms increasing. This tendency is even more
clearly noticeable in the newer States and Territories.
Only a few years ago a farm of 320 acres would, under
the system of agriculture prevailing in the northern
parts of the Union, have anywhere been a large one,
probably as much as one man could cultivate to advan-
tage. In California now there are farms (not cattle
ranges) of five, ten, twenty, forty and sixty thousand
acres, while the model farm of Dakota embraces 100,000
acres. The reason is obvious. It is the application of
machinery to agriculture and the general tendency to
production on a large scale. ' The same tendency which
substitutes the factory, with its army of operatives, for
many independent hand-loom weavers, is beginning to
exhibit itself in agriculture.
Now, the existence of this tendency shows two things:
first, that any measures which merely permit or facilitate
the greater subdivision of land would be inoperative;
and, second, that any measures which would compel it
would have a tendency to check production. If land in
large bodies can be cultivated more cheaply than land in
324
the remedy
Book VL
small bodies, to restrict o^mersliip to small bodies toII
reduce the aggregate production of wealth, and, in so
far as such restrictions are imposed and take effect, will
they tend to diminish the general productiveness of labor
and capital.
The effort, therefore, to secure a fairer division of
wealth by such restrictions is liable to the drawback of
lessening the amount to be divided. The device is like
tha*t of the monkey, who, dividing the cheese between
the cats, equalized matters by taking a bite off the big-
gest piece. •
But there is not merely this objection, which weighs
against every proposition to restrict the ownership of
land, 'wdth a force that increases with the efficiency of
the proposed measure. There is the further and fatal
objection that restriction will not secure the end which
is alone worth aiming at — a fair division of the produce.
It will not reduce rent, and therefore cannot increase
wages. It may make the comfortable classes larger, but
will not improve the condition of those in the lowest
class.
If what is known as the Ulster tenant right were ex-
tended to the whole of Great Britain, it would be but to -
carve out of the estate of the landlord an estate for the
tenant. The condition of the laborer would not be a
whit improved. If landlords were prohibited from ask-
ing an increase of rent from their, tenants and from
ejecting a tenant so long- as the fixed rent was paid, the
body of the producers would gain nothing. Economic
rent would still ■ increase, and would still steadily lessen
the proportion of the produce going to labor and capital.
The only difference would be that the tenants of the first
landlords, who would become landlords ■ in their turn,
would profit by the increase.
If by a restriction upon the amount of land any one
individual might hold, by the regulation of aevises and
Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 325
successions, or by cumulative taxation, the few thousand
land holders of Great Britain should be increased by two
or three million, these two or three million people would
be gainers. But the rest of the population would gain
nothing. They would have no more share in the ad-
vantages of land ownership than before. And if, what
is manifestly impossible, a fair distribution of the land
were made among the whole population, giving to each
his equal share, and laws enacted which would interpose
a barrier to the tendency to concentration by forbidding
the holding by any one of more than the fixed amount,
what would become of the increase of population?
Ju^t what may be accomplished by the greater division
of land may be seen in those districts of France and
Belgium where minute division prevails. That such a
division of land is on the whole much better, and that it
gives a far more stable basis to the state than that which
prevails in England, there can be no doubt. But that it
does not make wages any higher or improve the condi-
tion of the class who have only their labor, is equally
clear. These French and Belgian peasants practice a
rigid economy unknown to any of the English-speaking
' peoples. And if such striking symptoms of the poverty
and distress of the lowest class are not apparent as on
the other side of the channel, it must, I think, be at-
tributed, not only to this fact, but to another fact, which
accounts for the continuance of the minute' division of
the land — ^that material progress has qot been so rapid.
Neither has population increased with the same rapid-
ity (on the contrary it has been nearly, stationary) , nor
have improvements in the modes of production been so
great. Nevertheless, M. de Laveleye, all of whose pre-
■ possessions are in favor nf srnall holdings, and whose '
testimony will therefore carry more weight than that of
English observers, who may' be supposed to harbor a
prejudice for the system of their__own coimtry, states in
326
TBE REMEDY
Book VI.
his paper on the Land Systems of Belgium and Holland
printed by the Cobden Club, that the condition of the
laborer is worse under this s5’'stem of the minute division
of land than it is in England; while the tenant farmers
for tenancy largely prevails even where the morcelle-
ment is greatest — are rack-rented with a iPercilessness
unknown in England, and even in Ireland, and the
franchise "so far from raising them in the social scale,
is but a source of mortification and humiliation to them,
for they are forced to vote according to the dictates of
the landlord- instead of following the dictates of their
own inclination and convictions.”
But while the subdivision of land can thus do nothing
to cure the evils of land monopoly, while it can have no
effect in raising wages or in improving the condition of
the lowest classes, its tendency is to prevent the adop-
tion or even advocacy of more thorough-going -measures,
and to strengthen the existing unjust system by interest-
ing a larger number in its maintenance. M. de Laveleye,
in concluding the paper from which I have 'quoted,
urges the greater division of land as the surest means of
securing the great land owners of England from some-
thing far more radical. Although in the districts where
land is so minutely divided, the condition of the laborer
is, he states, the worst in Europe and the renting farmer
is much more ground down by his landlord than the
Irish tenant, yet "feelings hostile to social order,” M. de
Laveleye goes on to say, "do not manifest themselves,”
because — , '
“The tenant, although ground do-wn by 'the constant rise of
rents, lives among his equals, peasants like himself who have
tenants whom they use just as the large land holder does his.
rriR father, his brother, perhaps the man himself, possesses
something like an acre of land, which he Jets at as high ^
as he can get. In the public house peasant proprietors will boast
of the high rents they get for their lands, just as they might
Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES 327
boast of having sold their pigs or potatoes very dear. Letting
at as high a rent as possible comes thus to seem to him. to be
quite a matter of course, and he never dreams of finding fault
with either the land owners as a class or with property in land.
His mind is not likely :o dwell on the notion of a caste of
domineering landlords, of ‘bloodthirsty tyrants,’ fattening on
the sweat of impoverished tenants and doing no work them-
selves; for those who drive the hardest bargains are not the
great land owners but his own fellows. Thus, the distribution
•of a number of small properties among the -peasantry fonns a
kind of rampart and safeguard for the holders of large estates,
and peasant property may without exaggeration be called the
lightning conductor that averts from society dangers which
might otherwise lead to violent catastrophes.
“The concentration of land in large estates among a small
number of families is a sort of provocation of leveling legisla-
tion. The position^ of England, so enviable in many respects,
seems to me to be in this respect full of danger for the future.”
To me, for the very same reason that M. de Laveleye
expresses, the position of England seems full of hope.
Let us abandon all attempt to get rid of the evils of
land monopoly by restricting land ownership. An equal
distribution of land is impossible, and anything short of
that' would be only a mitigation, not a cure, and a mitiga-
tion that would prevent the adoption of a cure. Nor is
any remedy worth considering that does not fall in with
the natural direction of social development, and swim,
so to speak, with the current of the times. That con-
■ centratipn is .the order of development there can be no
•mistaking — ^the concentration of people in large cities,
the concentration of handicrafts in large factories, the
concentration of transportation by railroad and steam-
ship lines, and of agricultural operations in large fields.
The most trivial businesses are being concentrated in the
same way — errands are run and carpet sacks are carried
by corporations. All the currents of the time run to
cbncentration. To resist it successfully we must throt-
tle steam and discharge electricity from human service
CHAPTER II
THE TRUE REMEDY
We have traced the unequal distribution of wealth
which is the curse and menace of modem civilization to
the institution of private property in land. We have
seen that so long as this institution exists no increase in
productive power can permanent!}’’ benefit the masses;
but, on the contrary, must tend still further to depress
their condition. We have examined all the remedies,
short of the abolition of private property in land, which
are currently relied on or proposed for the relief of pov-
erty and the better distribution of wealth, and have
found them all inefficacious or impracticable.
There is but one way to remove an evil — and that is,
to remove its cause. Poverty deepens as wealth in-
creases, and wages are -forced down while productive
power grows, because land, which is the source of all
wealth and the field of all labor, is monopolized. To ex-
tirpate poverty, to make wages what justice commands
they should be, the full earnings of the laborer, we must
therefore substitute for the individual ownership of land ,
a common ownership. Nothing else will go to the cause
of the evil — ^in nothing else is there the slightest hope.
This, then, is the remedy for the unjust and unequal
distribution of wealth, apparent in modem civilization,
and for all the evils which flow from it;
We must make land common 'property.
We have reached this conclusion by an examination in
which every step has been proved and secured. In the
' 328
Chap. n.
THE TRUE REMEDY
329
chain of reasoning no link is wanting and no link is
weak. Deduction and induction have brought us to the
same truth — ^that the unequal ownership of land neces-
sitates the unequal distribution of wealth. And as in
the nature of things unequal ownership of land is in-
separable from the recognition of individual property in
land, it necessarily follows that the only remedy for the
unjust distribution of wealth is in making land common
property.
But this is a truth which, in the present state of so-
ciety, will arouse the most bitter antagonism, and must
fight its way, inch by inch. It will be necessary, there-
fore, to meet the objections of those who, even when
driven to admit this truth, will declare that it cannot be
practically applied.
In doing this we shall bring our previous reasoning to
a new and crucial test. Just as we try addition by sub-
traction and multiplication by division, so may we, by
testing the sufficiency of the remedy, prove the correct-
ness of our conclusions as to the cause of the evil.
The laws of the universe are harmonious. And if the
■ remedy to which we have been led is the true one, it
must be consistent with justice; it must be practicable
of application; it must accord with the tendencies of
social development and must harmonize with other
reforms.
All tins I propose to show. I propose to meet all
practical objections that can be raised, and to show that
this simple measure is not only easy of application; but
that it is a sufficient remedy for all the evils which, as
modern progress goes on, arise from the greater and
greater inequality in the distribution of wealth — that it
will substitute equality for inequality, plenty for want,
justice for injustice, social strength for social weakness,
and will open the way to grander and nobler advances of
civilization.
330
THE REaiEDY
Booh VI.
I thus propose to show that the Jaws of the universe do
not deny the natural aspirations of the human heart;
that the progress of society might be, and, if it is to con-
tinue, must be, toward Equality, not toward inequality;
and that the economic harmonies prove the truth per-
ceived by the Stoic Emperor —
“We are made for co-operation — like feet, like hands,
like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth”
I
't
BOOK vn
JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY
CHAPTER • I.— INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND
•CHAPTER II.— ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS THE ULTIMATE'
RESULT OF PRIVATE PROPERTY, IN LAND
CHAPTER m.— CLAIM OP LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION
CISAPTER IV.— PROPERTY IN LAND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED
CHAPTER V.— PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES
Justice is a relation of congruity which really subsists between
two things. This relation is always the same, whatever being
considers it, whether it be God, or an angel, or lastly a man.—
Montesquieu.
CHAPTER I
THE INJUSTICE OF PRH'ATE PROPERTY IN LAND
When it is proposed to abolish private property in land
the first question that will arise is that of justice.
Though often warped by habit, superstition, and self-
ishness into the most distorted forms, the sentiment of
justice is yet fundamental to the human mind, and what-
ever dispute arouses the passions of men, the conflict
is sure to rage, not so much as to the question “Is it
wise?” as to the question “Is it right?”
This tendency of popular discussions to take an ethical
form has a cause. It springs from a law of the human
mind; it rests upon a vague and instinctive recognition
of what is probably the deepest truth we can grasp.
That alone is wise which is just; that alone is enduring
v;hich is right. In the narrow scale of individual actions
and individual life this truth may be often obscured, but
in the wider field of national life it everywhere stands
out.'
I bow to this arbitrament, and accept, this test. If
our inquiry into the cause which makes low wages and
pauperism the accompaniments of material progress has
led us to a correct conclusion, it will bear translation
from terms of political economy into terms of ethics, and
as the source of social evils show a wrong. If it will not
do this, it is disproved. If it will do this, it is proved
by the final decision. If private property in land be
just, then is the remedy I propose a false one; if, on the
contrary, private property in land be unjust, then is this
remedy the true one.
333
334
JUSTICE OP THE KEMEDY
Book VII.
What constitutes tlie rightful basis of property? What
is it that enables a man justlj’’ to say of a thing, “It is
mine?” From what springs the sentiment which ac-
knowledges his exclusive right as against all the world?
Is it not, primaril}’’, the right of a man to himself, to the
use of his own powers, to the enjoyment of the fruits of
his own exertions? Is it not this individual right, which
springs from and is testified to by the natural facts of in-
dividual organization — the fact that each particular pair
of hands obey a particular brain and are related to a
particular stomach ; the fact that each man is a definite,
coherent, independent whole — which alone justifies indi-
vidual ownership? As a man belongs to himself, so his
labor when put in concrete form belongs to him.
And for this reason, that which a man makes or pro-
duces is his own, as against all the world— to enjoy or to
destroy, to use, to exchange, or to give. No one else
can rightfully claim it, and his exclusive right to it in-'
volves no wrong to any one else. Thus there is to
everything produced by human exertion a clear and in-
disputable title to exclusive possession and' enjoyment
which is perfectly consistent with justice, as it descends
from the original producer, in whom it vested by natural
law^ The pen with which I am writing is justly mine.
No other human being can rightfully lay claim to it, for
in me is the title of the producers who made it. It has
become mine, because transferred to me by the stationer,
to whom it was transferred by the importer, who ob-
tained the exclusive right to it by transfer from the
manufacturer, in whom, by the same process of pur-
chase, vested the rights of those who dug the material
from the ground and shaped it into a pen. Thus, my
exclusive right of ownership in the pen springs from the
natural, right of the individual to the use of his own
faculties. ' - i,- t.
Now, this is not only the original source from which
Chap. 1. INJUSTICE or PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 33B
all ideas of exclusive ownership arise — as is evident from
the natural tendency of the mind to revert to it when
the idea of exclusive ownership is questioned, and the
manner in which social relations develop — but it is nec-
essarily the onl3* source. There can be to the ownership
of anything no rightful title which is not derived from
the title of the producer and does not rest upon the
natural right of the man to himself. There can be no
other rightful title, because (1st) there is no other
natural right from which anj’ other title can be derived,
and (2d) because the recognition of any other title is
inconsistent with and destructive of this.
For (1st) what other right exists from which the right
to the exclusive possession of anything can be derived,
save the right of a man to himself? With what other
power is man by nature clothed, save the power of exert-
ing his own faculties? How can he in anj' other way act
upon or affect material things or other men? Paralj’-ze
the motor nerves, and your man has no more external
influence or power than a log or stone. From what else,
then, can the right of possessing and controlling. things
be derived? If it spring not from man himself, from
what can it spring? Nature acknowdedges no ownership
or control in man save as the result of exertion. In no
other way can her treasures be drawn forth, her powers
directed, or her forces utilized or controlled. She makes
no discriminations among men, but is to all absolutely
impartial. She knows no distinction between master
and slave, king and subject, saint and sinner. All men
to her stand upon an equal footing and have equal
rights. She recognizes no claim but that c' labor, and
recognizes that without respect to the claimant. If a
pirate spread his sails, the wind will fill them as well as
it will fill those of a peaceful merchantman or missionary
bark; if a king and a common man be thrown overboard,
neither can keep' his head above water except by swim-
336
JUSTICE OF THE .REaiEDY
Booh VII
ming; birds will not come to be shot by the proprietor of
the soil any quicker than they will come to be shot by
the poacher; fish will bite or will not bite at a hook in
utter disregard as to whether it is offered them by a good
little boj’’ who goes to Sunday-school, or a bad little boy
who plays truant; grain will grow only as the ground is
prepared and the seed is so^m; it is only at the call
of labor that ore can be raised from the mine; the sun
shines and the rain falls, alike upon just and unjust.
The laws of nature are the decrees of the Creator, There
is written in them no recognition of any right save
that of labor; and in them is written broadly and clearly
the equal right of all men to the use and enjoyment of
nature ; to apply to her by their exertions, and to receive
and possess her reward. Hence, as nature gives only to
labor, the exertion of labor in production is the only
title to exclusive possession.
2d. This right of ownership 'that springs from labor
excludes the possibility of any other right of ownership.
If a man be rightfully entitled to the produce of his
labor,, then no one can be rightfully entitled to the own-
ership of anything which is not .the produce of his labor,
or the labor of some one else from whom the right has
passed to him. If production give to the producer the
right to exclusive pos.session and enjoyment, there can
rightfully be no exclusive possession and enjoyment of
•anything not the production of labor, and the recogni-
tion of private property in land is a wrong. For the
right to the produce of labor cannot be enjoj'-ed without
the right to the free use of the opportunities offered by -
nature, and to admit the right of property in these. is
to deny the right of property in the produce of labor,
-y^en non-producers can claim as rent a portion of the
v?eakh created by producers,- the right of the producers
!* the fruits of their labor is to that extent denied.
^ rjljere is no escape from this position. To affirm that
Chap. I. ' INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND . 337
a man can rightfully claim exclusive ownership in his
own labor when embodied in material things, is to deny
that any one can rightfully claim exclusive ownership in
land. To afl5rm the rightfulness of property in land, is
to affirm a claim which has no warrant in nature, as
against a claim founded in the organization of man and
the laws of the material universe.
What most prevents the realization of the injustice of
private property in land is the habit of including all the
things that are made the subject of ownership in one
category, as property, or, if any distinction is made,
drawing the line, according to the unphilosophical dis-
tinction of the lawyers, between personal property and
rea) estate, or things movable and things immovable.
The real and natural distinction is between things which
are the produce of labor and things which are the gratu-
itous offerings of nature ; or, to adopt the terms of politi-
cal economy, between wealth and land.
These two classes of things are in' essence and relations
widely different, and to class them together as property
is to confuse all thought when we come to consider the
justice or the injustice, the right or the wrong of prop-
erty.
A house and the lot on which it stands are alike prop-
erty, as- being the subject of ownership, and are alike
classed by the lawyers as real estate. Yet in nature and
relations they differ widely. The one is produced by
human labor, and belongs to the class in political econ-
omy styled wealth. The other is a part of nature, and
belongs to the class in political economy styled land.
The essential character of the one class of things is
that they embody labor, are brought into being by
human exertion, their existence or non-existence, theii
increase or diminution, depending on man. The essential
character of the other class of things is. that they do not
embody labor, and exist irrespective of human exertion
338
JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY
Booh Vll.
and irrespective of rnanj they are the field or environ-
ment in which man finds himself j the'^storehouse from
which his needs must be supplied, the raw material upon
which and the forces with which alone his labor can act.
The moment this distinction is realized, that moment
is it seen that the sanction which natural justice gives
to one species of property is denied to the other; that
the rightfulness which attaches to individual property
in the produce of labor implies the wrongfulness of in-
dividual property in land; that, whereas the recognition
of the one places all men upon equal terms, securing to
each the due reward of his labor, the recognition of the
other is the denial of the equal rights of men, permitting
those who do not labor to take the natural reward of
those who do.
Whatever may be said for the institution of private
property in land, it is therefore plain that it cannot be.
defended on the score of justice.
The equal right of all men to the use of land is as
clear as their equal right to breathe the air — ^it is a
right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. Tor we
cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this
world and others no right.
If we are all here by the equal permission of the Crea-
tor, we are all here with an equal title to the enjoyment
of his bounty — ^with an equal right to the use of all that
nature so impartially offers.'^ This is a right which is
* In saying that 'private property in land can, in the ultimate
analysis, be justified only on the theoiy that some men have a
better right to existence than others, I am stating only what
the advocates of the existing sj^stem have themseh'es_ perceived.
What gave to MaJthus his popularity among the ruling classes
^what caused his illogical book to be received as a new revela-
tion, induced sovereigns to send him decorations, and the mean-
est rich man in England to propose to give him a living, was
the fact that he furnished a plausible reason for the assumption
that some have a better right to existence than others— an.
Chap. I. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 339
natural and inalienable; it is a right which vests in every
human being as he enters the world, and which during
his continuance in the world can be limited only by the
equal rights of' others. There is in nature no such thing
as a fee simple in land. There is on earth no power
which can rightfully make a grant of exclusive owner-
ship, in land. If all existing men were to unite to grant
away their equal rights, they could not grant away the
right of those who follow them. For what are we but
tenants for a day? Have we made the earth, that we
should determine the rights of those who after us shall
tenant it in their turn? The Almighty, who created the
. earth for man and man for the earth, has entailed it upon
all the generations of the children of men by a decree
written upon the constitution of all things — a' decree
which no human action can bar and no prescription de-
termine. Let the parchments be ever so many, or pos-
session ever so long, natural justice can recognize no
right in one man to the possession and enjoyment of
land that is not equally the right of all his fello-^'s.
Though his titles have been acquiesced in by generation
after generation, to the landed estates of the Duke of
.Westminster the poorest child that is born in London
assumption which is necessarj' for the justification of private prop-
erty in land, and which Malthus clearly states in the declara-
tion tliat the tendency of population is constantlj’' to bring into
the world human beings for whom nature refuses to provide,
and who consequently “have not the slightest right to any .share
in the e.\i.sting store of the necessaries of life;" whom she tells
as interlopers to begone, "and docs not hesitate to e.\tort by -
force obedience to her mandates,” employing for that purpose
“hunger and pestilence, war and crime, mortality and neglect
of infantine life, prostitution and sj*phili.s.” And to-day this
M.althusi.au doctrine is the ultimate defense upon which, those
who justify priv.ate property in land fall back. In no other way
c;m it be logically defended.
340
JUSTICE OP THE REMEDY
Book VII.
to-day has as much right as has his eldest son.* Though
the sovereign people pf the State of New York consent
to the landed possessions of the Astors, the puniest in-
fant that comes wailing into the world in the squalidest
room of the most miserable tenement house, becomes at
that moment seized of an equal right with the million-
aires. And it is robbed if the right is denied.
Our previous conclusions, irresistible in themselves,
thus stand approved by the highest and final test.
Translated from terms of political economy into terms of
ethics they show a wrong as the source of the evils which
. increase as material progress goes on.
The»masses of men, who in the midst of abundance
suffer want; who, clothed with political freedom, are
condemned to the wages of slavery; to whose toil labor-
saving inventions bring no relief, but rather seem to
rob them of a privilege, instinctively feel that "there is '
something wrong.” And they are right.
The wide-spreading social evils which everywhere op-
press men amid an advancing civilization spring from &
great primary wrong — the appropriation, as the exclusive
property of some men, of the land on which and from
which all must live. Trom this fundamental injustice
flow all the injustices which distort and endanger modern
♦This natural and inalienable right to the equal use and
enjoyment of land is so apparent that it has been recognized
by men wherever force or habit has not blunted first percep-
tions. To give but one instance: The white settlers of New
Zealand found themselves unable to get from the Maoris what
the latter considered a complete title to land, because, although
a whole tribe might have consented to a sale, they would still
claim with every new child bom among them an additional
payment on the ground .that they had parted with only their own
rights, and could not sell those of the unborn. The govern-
ment was obliged to step in' and. settle the matter by buymg
land for a tribal annuity, in which eveiy child that • is bom
tequires a share.
Chav. I. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 341
development, which condemn the producer of wealth to
poverty and pamper the non-producer in luxury, which
rear the tenement house with the palace, plant the
brothel behind the church, and compel us to build pris-
ons as we open new schools.
There is nothing strange or inexplicable in the phe-
nomena that are now perplexing the world. It is not
that material progress is not in itself a good; it is not
that nature has called into being children for whom she
has failed to provide; it is not that the Creator has left
on natural laws a taint of injustice at which even the
human mind revolts, that material progress brings such
bitter fruits. That amid our highest civilization men.
faint and die with want is not due to the niggardliness of
nature, but to the injustice of man. Vice and misery,
poverty and pauperism, are not the legitimate results of
increase of population and industrial development; they
inly follow increase of population and industrial de-
velopment because land is treated as private property —
they are the direct and necessary results of the violation
of the supreme law of justice, involved in giving to some
men the exclusive possession of that which nature pro-
vides for all men.
The recognition of individual proprietorship of land is
the denial of the natural rights of other individuals — ^it
is a wrong which must show itself in the inequitable di-
vision of wealth. For as labor cannot produce without
the use of land, the denial of the equal right to the use
of land is necessarily the denial of the right of labor to
its own produce. If one man can command the land
upon which others must labor, he can appropriate the
produce of their labor as the price of his permission to
labor. The fundamental law of nature, that her enjoy-
ment by man shall be consequent upon his exertion, is-
thus violated. The one receives without producing; the
others produce without receiving. The one is unjustly
340
JUSTICE OF THE BEMEDY
Book VII
to-day has as much right as has his eldest son.* Though
tho sovereign people of the State of New York consent
to the landed possessions of the Astors, the puniest in-
fant that comes wailing into the world in the squalidest
room of the most miserable tenement house, becomes at
that moment seized of an equal right with the million-
aires, And it is robbed if the right is denied.
Our previous conclusions, irresistible in themselves,
thus stand approved by the highest and final test.
Translated from terms of political economy into terms of
ethics they show a wrong as the source of the evils which
increase as material progress goes on.
The»masses of men, who in the inidst of abundance
suffer want; who, clothed with political freedom, are
condemned to the wages of slavery; to whose toil labor-
saving inventions bring no relief, but rather seem to
rob them of a privilege, instinctively feel that ^'there is '
something wrong.'' And they are right.
The wide-spreading social evils which everywhere op-
press men amid an advancing civilization spring from a
great primary wrong — ^the appropriation, as the exclusive
property of some men, of the land on which and from
which all must live. From this fundamental injustice
flow all the injustices which distort and endanger modern
♦This natural and inalienable right to the equal use and
enjoyment of land is so apparent that it has been recognized
by men wherever force or habit has not blunted first percep-
tions. To give but one instance; The white settlers of New
Zealand found themselves unable to get from the Maoris what
the latter considered a complete title to land, because, although
a whole tribe might have consented to a sale, they would_ still
claim with every new child bom among them an additional
payment on the ground that they had parted with only their own
rights, and could not sell those of the unborn. The govern-
ment was obliged to step in' and. settle the matter by buying
land for a tribal annuity, in which eveiy child that -is bom
acquires a share.
340
JUSTICE OP THE REMEDY
Book YU.
to-day has as much right as has his eldest sod* Though
the sovereign people of the State of New York consent
to the landed possessions of the Astors, the puniest in-
fant that comes wailing into the world in the squalidest
room of the most miserable tenement house, becomes at
that moment seized of an equal right with the million-
aires. And it is robbed if the right is denied.
Our previous conclusions, irresistible in themselves,
thus stand approved by the highest and final test.
Translated from terms of political economy into terms of
ethics they show a wrong as the source of the evils which
. increase as material progress goes on.
The .masses of men, who in the midst of abundance
suffer want; who, clothed with political freedom, are
condemned to the wages of slavery; to whose toil labor-
saving inventions bring no relief, but rather seem to
rob them of a privilege, instinctively feel that “there is ’
something wrong. And they are right.
The wide-spreading social evils which everywhere op-
press men amid an advancing civilization spring from a
great primary wrong — the appropriation, as the exclusive
property of some men, of the land on which and from
which all must live. From this fundamental injustice
flow all the injustices which distort and endanger modem
♦This natural and inalienable right to the equal use and
enjoyment of land is so apparent that it has been recognized
by men wherever force or habit has not blunted first percep-
tions. To give but one instance; The white settlers of New
Zealand found themselves imable to get from the Maoris what
the latter considered a complete title to land, because, although
a whole tribe might have consented to a sale, they would still
claim with every new child bom among them an additional
payment on the ground that they had parted with only their o^vn
rights, and could not sell those of the unborn. The govepi-
ment was obliged to step in' and settle the “a^ter by buying
land for a tribal annuity, in which every child that -is bora
tcquires a share.
342
JUSTICE OF the HEMEDY
Book VII,
enriched; the others are robbed. To this fundamental
■wrong we have traced the unjust distribution of wealth
■which is separating modern societ3^ into the very rich
and the very poor. It is the continuous increase of rent
— ^the price that labor is compelled to pay for the use of
land, v/hich strips the many of the wealth they justly
earn, to pile it up in the hands of the few, who do noth-
ing to earn it,
Wliy should they who suffer 'from this injustice hesi-
tate for one moment to sweep it away? Who are the
land holders that they should thus be permitted to -reap
where they have not sown? ' '■ >
Consider for a moment the, utter absurdity of the
titles by which we permit to be: gravely passed . from
John Doe to Richard Roe the right exclusively to pos-
sess the earth, giving absolute dominion as against al^.
others. In California our land titles .go back to tht
Supreme Government of Mexico, who ■ took from the
Spanish King, who took from the Pope, when he by a
stroke of the pen divided lands yet to be discovered be-
tween the Spanish or Portuguese — or if you please they
rest upon conquest. In the Eastern States they go back
to treaties with Indians and grants from English Kings;
in Louisiana to the Government of France; in Florida
to the Government of Spain; while in England they go
back to the Norman conquerors. Everywhere, not to
a right which obliges; -but to a force which compels.
And when a title rests but on force, no complaint can
bd made when -force annuls it. Whenever the people,
having the power, choose to annul those titles, no ob-
jection can be made' in the name of justice. There have
existed, men who had the power to hold or to give ex-
clusive possession of portions of the earth's surface, but
when and where, did there exist the human being who
had the right? u ■
The right to exclusive ownership of anything of human
Chap. I. INJUSTICE OP PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 343
production is‘ clear. No matter how many the hands
tlu-ough which it has passed, there was, at the begim
ning of the line, human labor — some one who, having
procured or produced it by his exertions, had to it a clear
title as against all the rest of mankind, and which could
justly pass from one to another by sale or gift. But
at the end of what string of conveyances or grants can
be shovm or supposed a like title to any part of the ma-
terial universe? To improvements, such an original title
can be shown ; but it is a title only to the improvements,
and not to the land itself. If I clear a forest, drain a
swamp, or fill a morass, all I can justly claim is the
value given by these exertions. They give me no right to
the land itself, no claim other than to my equal share
with every other member of the community in the value
which is added to it by the growth of the community.
But it will be said: There are improvements which in
ime become indistinguishable from the land itself I-
Very well; then the titie to the improvements becomes
blended with the title to the land; the individual right is
lost in the common right. It is the greater that swallows
up the less, not the less that swallows up ' the greater.
Nature does not proceed from man, but man from na-
ture, and it is into the bosom of nature that he and all
his works must return again.
. Yet, it will be said: As every man has a right to the
use and enjoyment of nature, the man who is using land
must be permitted the exclusive right to its use in order
that he may. get the full benefit of his labor. But there
is ho difi&culty in determining where the individual right
ends and the common right begins. A delicate and ex-
act test is supplied by value, and with its aid there is no
difiiculty, no matter how dense population may become,
in determining and securing the exact rights of each, .the
equal rights'of all. The value of land, as we have seen,
is the price of monopoly. It is not the absolute, but the
8U
JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY
Book VIZ
TGlative, capability of land that determines its value.
No matter what may be its intrinsic qualities, land that
is no better than other land which may be had for the
using can have no value. And the value of land always
measures the difference between it and the best land that
may be had for the using. Thus, the value of land ex-
presses in exact and tangible form the right of the com-
munity in land held by an individual; and rent expresses
the exact amount which the individual should pay to the
community to satisfy the equal rights of all other mem-
bers of the community. Thus, if we concede to priority
of possession the undisturbed use of land, confiscating
rent for the benefit of the community, we reconcile the
fixity of tenure which is necessary for improvement with
a full and complete recognition of the equal rights of
all to the use of land.
As for the deduction of a complete and exclusive indi-
vidual right to land from priority of occupation, that is,
if possible, the most absurd ground on which land owner-
ship can be defended. Priority of occupation give exclu-
sive and perpetual title to the surface of a globe on
which, in the order of nature, countless generations suc-
ceed each other! Had the men of the last generation
any better right to the use of this world than we of this?
or the men of a hundred years ago? or of a thousand
years ago? Had the mound-builders, or the cave-dwell-
ers, the contemporaries of the mastodon and the three-
toed horse, or the generations still further back, who, in
dim seons that we can think of only as geologic periods, .
followed each other on the earth we now tenant for our
little day?
Has the first comer at a banquet the right to turn back
all the chairs and claim that none of the other guests
shall partake of the food provided, except as they make
terms with him? Does the first man who presents a
ticket at the door of a theater, and passes in, acquire by
his priority the right to shut the doors and have the per-
Chap. I. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 345
formance go on for him alone? Does the first passenger
■who enters a railroad car obtain the right to scatter his
baggage over all the seats and compel the passengers
who come in after him to stand up?
The cases are perfectly analogous. We arrive and we
depart, guests at a banquet continually spread, specta-
tors and participants in an entertainment where there is
room for all who come' passengers from station to sta-
tion, on an orb that whirls through space — our rights to
take and possess cannot be exclusive; they must be
bounded everywhere by the equal rights of others. Just
as the passenger in a railroad car may spread himself
and his baggage over as many seats as he pleases, until
other passengers come in, so may a settler take and use
as much land as he chooses, until it is needed by others
— ra fact which is shown by the land acquiring a value—
when his right must be curtailed by the equal rights of
the others, and no priority of appropriation can give a
right which will bar these equal rights of others. If this
were not the case, then by priority of appropriation one
man could acquire and could transmit to whom .he
pleased, not merely the exclusive right to 160 acres, or
to 640 acres, but to a whole township, a whole State, a
whole continent.
And to this manifest absurdity does the recognition of
individual right to land come when carried to its ultimate
— ^that any one human being, could he concentrate in
himself the individual rights to the land of any country,
could expel therefrom all the rest of its inhabitants; and
could he thus concentrate the individual rights to the
whole surface of the globe, he alone of all the teeming
population of the earth would have the right to live.
And what upon this supposition would occur is, upon
a smaller scale, realized in actual fact. The territorial
lords of Great Britain, to whom grants ..of land have
• given the “white parasols and elephants mad with pride,”
have over and over again expelled from large districts
346 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY BookVJl.
the native population, whose ancestors had lived on the
land from immemorial times— driven them off to emi-
grate, to become paupers, or to starve. And on unculti-
vated tracts of land in the new State of California rnay
be seen the blackened chimneys of homes from which set-
tlers have been driven by force of laws which ignore nat-
ural right, and great stretches of land which might be
populous are desolate, because 'the recognition of exclu-
sive ownership has put it in the power of one human crea-
ture to forbid his fellows from using it. The comparative
handful of proprietors who own the surface of the Brit-
ish Islands would be doing only what English law gives
them full power to do, and what many of them' have
done on a smaller scale already, were they to exclude
the millions of British people from their natiye islands..
And such an exclusion, by which a few hundred thou-
sand should - at will banish thirty million people from
their native country, while it would be more' striking
would not be a whit more' repugnant to natural ' righi
than the spectacle now presented, of the vast body of
the British people being compelled to pay such enormous
sums to a few of their number for the privilege of bemg
permitted to live upon and use the land whi.ch they so
fondly call their own; which is endeared to; theni by
memories so tender and so glorious, and for which they,
are held in duty bound, if need be/ to spill their blood
and lay down their 'Hves.
I refer only to the British Islands, because, land own-'
ership being more concentrated there, they afford a more
striking illustration of what .private property in land
necessarily involves. “To whomsoever, the soil at any .
time belongs, to him belong the fruits of it,” is a truth
that becomes more and more apparent as population
becomes denser and invention and improvement add to
productive power; but it is everywhere. a truth — as much
in our .new States as in the British Islands or by the
banks of the Indus.
CHAPTER II
THE ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS THE ULTIMATE RESULT OF
PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND
If "chattel slavery be unjust, then is private property
in land unjust.
For let the' circumstances be what they may— the own-
ership of land will always give the ownership of men, to
a degree measured by the necessity (real or artificial)
■ for the use' of land. This is but a statement in different
form of the law of rent.
■' And when that necessity is absolute — ^when starvation
is the alternative to the use of land, then does the own-
ership ^of men involved in the ownership of land become
absolute.
Place one hundred men on an island from which there
IS no escape,' and whether you make one of these men the
absolute owner of the other ninety-nine, or the absolute
owner of -the soil of the island, will make no difference
either to him or to them.
In the one case, as the other, the one will be the abso-
lute master of the ninety -nine — his power extending even
to life and death, for simply to refuse them permission
^ to live upon the island would be to force them into the
sea. ' ' •
Upon a" larger scale, and through more complex rela-
tions, the same cause must operate in the- same way and
to, the same end— the ultimate result, the enslavement ,
of laborers, becoming apparent just as the pressure in-
creases which compels them to live on and from land
. 347
348
JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY
Book VII.
which is treated as the exclusive property of others.
Take a country in which the soil is divided among a
number of proprietors, instead of being in the hands of
one, and in which, as in modern production, the capitalist’
has been specialized from the laborer, and manufactures
and exchange, in all their many branches, have been
separated from agriculture. Though less direct and ob-
vious, the relations between the owners of the soil and
the laborers will, with increase of population and the
improvement of the arts, tend to the same absolute mas-
tery on the one hand and the same 'abject helplessness
on the other, as in the case of the island we have sup-
posed. Rent will advance, while wages will fall. Of
the aggregate produce, the land owner will get a con-
stantly increasing, the laborer a constantly diminishing
share. Just as removal to cheaper land becomes difficult
or impossible, laborers, no matter what they produce,
will be reduced to a bare living, and the free competi-
tion among them, where land is monopolized, will force
them to a condition which, though they may be mocked
with the titles and insignia of freedom, will be virtually
that of slavery.
There is nothing strange in the fact that, in spite of
the enormous increase in productive power which this,
century has witnessed, and which is still going on, the
wages of labor in the lower and wider strata of industry
should everywhere tend to the wages of slavery— just
enough to keep the laborer in working condition. Tor'
the ownership of the land on which and from which a
man must live is virtually the ownership of the man
himself, and in acknowledging the right of some indi-
viduals to the exclusive use and enjoyment of the earth,
we condemn other individuals to slavery as fully and
as completely as though we had formally rnade them
chattels.
In a simpler form of society^ w'here production chiefly
Chap. II.
ENSLAVEMENT OP LABORERS
349
consists in the direct application of labor to the soil, the
slavery’- that is the necessary result of according to some
the exclusive right to the soil from which all must live,
is plainly seen in helotism, in villeinage, in serfdom.
Chattel slavery originated in the capture of prisoners
in war, and, though it has existed to some extent in
every part of the globe, its area has been small, its effects
trivial, as compared with the forms of slavery which
have originated in the appropriation of land. No people
as a mass have ever been reduced to chattel slavery to
men of their own race, nor yet on any large scale has
any people ever been reduced to slavery of this kind by
conquest. The general subjection of the many to the
few, which we meet with wherever society has reached
a certain development, has resulted from the appropria-
tion of land as individual property. It is the ownership
of the soil that everywhere gives the ownership of the
men that live upon it. It is slavery of this kind to
which the enduring pyramids arid the colossal monu-
ments .of Egypt yet bear witness, and of the institution
of which we have, perhaps, a vague tradition in the
biblical story of the famine during which the Pharaoh
purchased up the lands of the people. It was slavery
of this kind to which, in the twilight of history, the
conquerors of Greece reduced the original inhabitants
of that peninsula, transforming them into^helots by mak-
ing them pay rent for their lands. It was the growth
of the latifundia, or great landed estates, which trans-
muted the population of ancient Italy, from a race of
hardy husbandmen, whose robust virtues conquered the
world, into a race of cringing bondsmen; it was the ap-
propriation of the land as the absolute property of their
chieftains which gradually turned the descendants of
free and equal Gallic, Teutonic and Hunnish warriors
into colonii and villains, and which changed the inde-
pendent burghers of Sclavonic village communities irito
850
JUSTICE, OF THE EEMEDY
Booi VII
the boors of Rcjsia and the .serfs of Poland: which
instituted the feudalism of China and Japan, as well as
that of Europe, and wdiich made the High Chiefs of
Polynesia the all but absolute masters. of their fellows.
How^ it came to pass that the Aryan shepherds and
warriors who, as comparative philology , tells us,' de-
scended from the common birthplace of the Indo-Ger-
manic race into the lowlands of India, were turned into
the suppliant and cringing Hindoo, the Sanscrit verse
which I have before quoted gives us a hint. The white
parasols and the elephants mad with pride of the Indian
Rajah are the flowers of grants of land; And could ye
find the key to the records of the. long-buried civiliza-
tions that lie entombed in the, gigantic ruins . of Yucatan
and Guatemala, telling at once of the pride' of a ruling
class, and the unrequited toil to. which the masses were
condemned, we should read, in all human probability,
of ,a slavery imposed, upon the great body of the people
through the appropriation of the land as the property of
a few — of another illustration of the universal truth that
they who possess the land are masters of the men who
dwell upon it. , • .
The necessary relation between labor and land, the ab-
solute power which, the. ownership of land gives over men
who cannot live but by using it, explains what is other-
wise inexplicable— the growth and persistence of institu-
tions, manners, and Ideas so- utterly repugnant to the
natural sense of liberty 'and equality.
When the. idea of individual ownership, which so justly
and .naturally attaches to things of human production,
is extended to land, all the rest is a mere matter of de-
velopment. The strongest and most cimning easily acT
quire, a superior share in this' species of property, which
.is to be had, not by production, .but by appropriation,
and in becoming, lords of; the land they become neces-
- sarily lords of their fellow-men. The ownership of land
Chap. JI.
ENSLAVEIilENT OP LABORERS
351
is the basis of aristocracy. It was not nobility that gave
land, but the possession of land that gave nobility. All
the enormous privileges of the nobility of medieval
Europe flowed from their position as the owners of the^
soil. ■ The simple principle of the ownership of the soil
produced, on the one side, the lord, on the other, the'
vassal — ^the one having all rights, the other none. The
right of the lord to the soil acknowledged and main-
tained, those who lived upon if could do so only upon
his terms. The manners and conditions of the times'
made those terms include services and servitudes, as*
well as rents in produce or money, but the essential',
thing that compelled them was the ownership of land..
This power exists wherever the ownership of land exists,
and can be brought out wherever the competition for
the use of land is great enough to enable the landlord
to make his own terms. The English land owner of to--
day has, in the law which recognizes his exclusive right
■to' the land, essentially all the power which his prede-
cessor the. feudal baron had. He might command rent
in services or servitudes. He might compel his tenants
to dress themselves in a particular way, to . profess a
particular religion, to send their children to a particular
school, to submit their ‘differences to his decision, to
fall upon their knees when he spoke to them, to follow
him around dressed in his livery, or to sacrifice to hixn
female honor, if they would prefer these things to being
driven, off his land. He- could demand, in short, any
terms on which men would still consent to live on his
land, and the law could not prevent him so long as it
did not 'qualify his ownership,- for compliance with them
would assume the forpa of -a free contract or voluntary,
act. ' And English lahdlords do exercise such of these •
powers as' in the manners of: the times they care to.-
Having’ shaken'^ off the obligation of providing for the
defense.' of the country, they ho longer need the- military ,
352
JUSTICE OP THE EEMEDY
Book VII.
service of their tenants, and the possession of wealth
and power being now shown in other ways than by long
trains of attendants, they no longer care for personal
service. But they liabitually control the votes of their
tenants, and dictate to them in many little ways. That
“right reverend father in God,” Bishop Lord Plunkett,'
evicted a number of his poor Irish tenants because they
would not send their children to Protestant Sunday-
schools; and to that Earl of Leitrim for whom Nemesis
tarried so long before she sped the bullet of an assassin,
even darker crimes are imputed; while, at the cold
promptings of greed, cottage after cottage has been
pulled down and family after family forced into the
roads. The principle that permits this is the same prin-
ciple that in ruder times and a simpler social state en-
thralled the great masses of the common people and
placed such a wide gulf between noble and peasant.
"Where the peasant was made a serf, it was simply by
forbidding him to leave the estate on which he was bom,
thus artificially producing the condition we supposed on
the island. In sparsely settled countries this is neces-
sary’’ to produce absolute slavery, but where land is
fully occupied, competition may produce substantially
the same conditions. Between the condition of the rack-
rented Irish peasant and the Russian serf, the advan--
tage was in many things on the side of the serf. The
serf did not starve.
Now, as I think I have conclusively proved, it is the
same cause which has in every age degraded and en-
slaved the laboring masses that is working in the civi-
lized world to-day. Personal liberty— that is to say, the
liberty to move about — ^is everywhere conceded, while
of political and legal inequality there are in the United .
States no vestiges, and in the most backward civilized
countries but few. But the great cause of inequality re-
mains, and is manifesting itself in the unequal distribu-
Chap. II. ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS 35c
tion of wealth. The essence of slavery is that it takes
from the laborer all he produces save enough to support
an animal existence, and to this minimum the wages of
free labor, -under existing conditions, unmistakably tend.
Whatever be the increase of productive power, rent stead-
ily tends to swallow up the gain, and more than the gain.
Thus the condition of the- masses in every civilized
country is, or is tending to become, that of virtual slav-
ery under the forms of freedom. And it is probable that
of all kinds of slavery this is' the most cruel and relent-
less. -For the laborer is robbed of the produce of his
labor and compelled to toil for a mere subsistence; but
his taskmas'ers, instead of human beings, assume the
forms of imperious necessities. Those to whom his
labor is rendered and from whom his wages are received
are often driven in their turn — contact between the la-
borers and the ultimate beneficiaries of their labor is
sundered, and individuality is lost. The direct respon-
sibility of master to slave, a responsibility which* exer-
cises a softening influence upon the great majority of
men, does not arise; it is not one human being who
seems to drive another to unremitting and ill-requited
toil, but “the inevitable laws of supply and demand,”
for which no one in particular is responsible.
The maxims of Cato the Censor — maxims which were
regarded with abhorrence even in an age of cruelty and
^universal slaveholding — ^that after as much work as pos-
sible is obtained from a slave he should be turned out
to die, become the common rule; and even the selfish in-
terest which prompts the master to look after the com-
fort and well-being of the slave is lost. Labor has'
become a commodity, and the laborer a machine. There
are no masters and slaves, no owners and owned, but
only buyers and sellers! The higgling of the market-
takes the place of every other sentiment.
354
JUSTICE OP THE KEMEDT
BooTi VII.
When the slaveholders of the South looked upon the
free laboring poor in the most advanced
civilized countries, it is no wonder that they easily per-
suaded themselves of the divine institution of slavery.
That the field hands of the South were as a class better
fed,^ better lodged, better clothed; that they had less
anxiety and more of the amusements and enjoyments
of life than the agricultural laborers of England there
can be no doubt; and even in the Northern cities, visit-
ing slaveholders might see and hear of things impossible
under what they called their organization of labor. In
the Southern States, during the days of slavery, the
master who would have compelled his negroes to work
and live as large classes of free white men and women
are compelled in free countries to work and live, would
have been deemed infamous, and if public opinion had
not restrained him, his own selfish interest in the main-
tenance of the health and strength of his chattels would.
But in London, New York, and. Boston, among people
, whoTiave given, and would .give again, money and blood
to free the slave, where no one could abuse a beast in
public without arrest and punishment, barefooted and
ragged children may be seen running around the streets
even in the winter time, and in squalid garrets and noi-
some cellars women work away their lives for wages
that fail to keep them in proper warmth and nourish-
ment. Is it any wonder that to the slaveholders of the
South the demand for the abolition of slavery seemed
like the cant of hypocrisy?
And now that slavery has been abolished, the planters
of the South find they, have sustained no loss. Their
ownership- of the land upon which the freedmen must
live gives them practically as much command of labor
as before, while- they are relieved of responsibility,
sometimes very, expensive. The negroes as yet have
the alternative of emigrating, and a great movement
Chap. IJ. ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS 355
that kind seems now about commencing, but as popula-
tion increases and land becomes dear, the planters will
get a greater proportionate share of the earnings of their
laborers than they did under the system of chattel slav-
ery, and the laborers a less share — for under the system
of chattel slavery the slaves always got at least enough
to keep them in good physical health, but in such coun-
tries as England there are large classes of laborers who
do not get that.'^
The influences which, wherever there is personal re-
lation between master and slave, slip in to modify chat-
tel slavery, and to prevent the master from exerting to
its fullest extent his power over the slave, also showed
themselves in the ruder forms of serfdom that charac-
terized the earlier periods of European development, and
aided by religion, and, perhaps, as in chattel slavery,
by the more enlightened but still sejfish interests of the
lord, and hardening into custom, universally fixed a
limit to what the owner of the land could extort from
the serf or peasant, so that' the competition of men
without means of existence bidding against each dlher
for access to the means of existence, was nowhere suf-
fered to go to its full length and exert its full power of
deprivation and degradation. The helots of Greece,
the metayers of Italy, the serfs of Russia and Roland,
the peasants of feudal Europe, rendered to their land-
lords a fixed proportion either of their produce or their
labor, and were not generally squeezed past that point.
But the influences which thus stepped in to modify the
.*One of the anti-slavery agitat9rs (Col. J. A. Collins) ,on a
visit to England addressed a large audience in a Scotch manu-
facturing- town, and • wound up as he had been used to in the
United States, by giving .the ration which in the slave codes, of
some of the States fixed the minimum of maintenance , for a
slave. He quickly discovered that to many, of his hearers it
■was an anti-climax. * ‘ ’ ’ " ' ' ' '
356
JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY
• Book VII.
extortive power of land ownership, and which may still
be seen on English estates where the landlord and his
family deem it their duty to send medicines and com-
forts to the sick and infirm, and to look after the well-
being of their cottagers, just as the Southern planter
was accustomed to look after his negroes, are lost in the
more refined and less obvious form which serfdom as-
sumes in the more complicated processes of modern
production, which separates so widely and by so many
intermediate gradations the individual whose labor is
appropriated from him who appropriates it, and makes
the relations between the members of the two classes
not direct and particular, but indirect and general. In
modern society, competition has free play to force from
the laborer the very utmost he can give, and with what
terrific force it is acting may be seen in the condition
of the lowest class in the centers of wealth and industry.
That the condition of this lowest class is not yet more
general, is to be attributed to the great extent of fertile
land which has hitherto been open on this continent, and
which has not merely afforded an escape for the increas-
ing population of the older sections of the Union, but has
greatly relieved the pressure in Europe — in one country,
Ireland, the emigration having been so great as actually
to reduce the population. This avenue of relief cannot
last forever. It is already fast closing up, and as it.
closes, the pressure must become harder and harder.
■ It is not without reason that the wise crow in the
Ramayana, the crow Biishanda, ‘‘who has lived in every
part of the universe and knows all' events from the be-
ginnings of time,” declares that, though contempt of
worldly advantages is necessary to supreme felicity, yet
the keenest pain possible is inflicted by extreme pov-
erty. The poverty to which in advancing civilization
great masses of men are condemned, is not the freedom
from distraction and temptation which sages have
Chap. II.
ENSLAVEMENT OP LABORERS
357
sought and philosophers have praised; it is a degrading
and embruting slavery, that cramps the higher nature,
dulls the finer feelings, and drives men by its pain to
acts which the brutes would refuse. It is into this help-
less, hopeless poverty, that crushes manhood and de-
stroys womanhood, that robs even childhood of its
innocence and joy, that the working classes are being
driven by a force which acts upon them like a resistless
and unpitying machine. The Boston collar manufac-
turer who pays his girls two cents an' hour may com-
miserate their condition, but he, as they, is governed by
the law of competition, and cannot pay more and carry
on his business, for exchange is not governed by senti-
ment. And so, through all intermediate, gradations, up
to those who receive the earnings of labor without re-
turn, in the rent of land, it is the inexorable laws of
supply and demand, a power with which the individual
. can no more quarrel or dispute than with the winds
and the tides, that seem to press down the lower classes
into the slavery of want.
But in reality, the cause is that which always has
and always must result in slavery — ^the monopolisjation
by some of what nature has designed for all.
Our boasted freedom necessarily involves slavery, so
long as we recognize private property in land. Until
that is abolished. Declarations of Independence and
Acts of Emancipation are in vain. So long as one man
can claim the exclusive ownership of the land from
which ■ other men must live, slavery will exist, and as
material progress goes on, must grow and deepen!
This — and in previous chapters of this book we have
traced the process, step by step — ^is what is going on in
the civilized world to-day. Private ownership of land
is the nether millstone. Material progress is the upper
millstone. Between them, with an increasing pressure
the working classes are being ground.
CHAPTER III
CLAIM OF LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION
The truth is,, and from this truth there can be no
escape, that there is and can be no just title to an ex-
clusive possession of the soil, and that private property
m land is a bold, bare, enormous wrong, like that of
chattel slavery.
The majority of men in civilized communities do not
recognize this, simply because the majority of men do
not think. With them whatever is, is right, until its
wrongfulness has been frequently pointed out, and in
general they are ready to crucify whoever first attempts
"this.
But it. is impossible for any one to study political
economy, even as at present taught, or to think at all
upon the production and distribution of wealth, without
.seeing that property in land differs essentially from
property in things of human production, and that it has
no warrant in abstract justice.
This is admitted, either expressly or tacitly, in every
standard work on political economy, but in general
merely by vague admission or omission. Attention is
in general called away from the truth, as a lecturer on
moral philosophy in a slave-holding community might
call away attention from too close a consideration of
the natural rights of men, and private property in land
is accepted without comment, as an existing, fact, or is
assumed to.be necessary to the proper use of land and
the existence of the civilized state.
Chap: III. CLAIM OF LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION 359
The examination through which we have passed has
proved conclusively^ that private property in land can-
not be justified on the ground of utility— that, on the
contrary, it is the great cause to which are to be traced
the poverty, misery, and degradation, the social disease
and the political weakness which are showing them-
selves so menacingly amid advancing civilization. Ex-
pediency, therefore, joins justice in demanding that we
abolish it.
When expediency thus joins justice in demanding that
we abolish an institution that has no broader base or
stronger ground than a mere municipal regulation what
reason can there be for hesitation? . ’
The consideration that seems to cause hesitation, even
on the part of those who see clearly that land by right is
com^mon property, is the idea that haying perroitted
iand to be treated as private property for so long we
should in abolishing it be doing a wrong to. those who
oave been suffered to base their calculations upon its
permanence; that having permitted land to be held as
rightful property, we should by the resumption of com-
mon rights be doing injustice to those who have pur-
chased It with what was unquestionably their riahtful
property. Thus, it is held that if we abolish private
property m land, justice requires that we should fully
compensate those who now possess it, as the British
Government, in abolishing the purchase and sale of
compensate
in th A r An c^ccions .which they had purchased
abolishing slavery . in the British West Indies $100,000,-
hOO was paid the slaveholders.
A'?®* Spencer, who in his “Social Statics” has
whic A^ the invalidity , of every title by
wnich ithe exclusive possession of land is claimed eives
untenance to this idea (though it seems to me iifcon-
360
JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY
Book VII.
sistently) by declaring that justly to estimate and liqui-
-date the claims of the present landholders “who have
either by their own acts or by the acts of their ancestors
given for their estates equivalents of honestly-earned
wealth/' to be “one of the most intricat-e problems so-
ciety will one day have to solve."
It is this idea that suggests the proposition, which
finds advocates in Great Britain, that the government
shall purchase at its market price the individual pro-
prietorship of the land of the country, and it was this
idea which led John Stuart Mill, although clearly per-
ceiving the essential injustice of private properly in
land, to advocate, not a full resumption of the land, but
only a resumption of accruing advantages in the future.
His plan was that a fair and even liberal estimate
should be made of the .market value of all the land in
the kingdom, and that future additions to that value,
not due to, the improvements of the proprietor, should
be taken by the state.
To say nothing of the practical difficulties which such
cumbrous plans involve, in the extension of the func-
tions of government which they would require and the
corruption they would beget, their inherent and essen-
tial defect lies in the impossibility of bridging over by
any compromise the radical difference between wrong
and right. ■ Just in proportion as the interests of the
land holders are conserved, just in that proportion must
general interests and general rights be disregarded, and
if land holders are to lose nothing of their special privi-
leges, the people at large can gain nothing. To buy up
individual property rights would merely be to give the
land holders in another form a claim of the same kind
and amount that their possession of land now gives
them; it would be to raise for them by taxation the
same proportion of the earnings of labor and capital
that they are now enabled to appropriate in rent. Their
Cha-p. III. CLAIM OF LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION 36i
unjust advantage would be preserved and the unjust
disadvantage of the non-landholders would be contin-
ued. To be sure there would be a gain to the people at
large when the advance of rents had made the amount
which the land holders would take under the present
system greater than the interest upon the purchase price
of the land at present rates, but this would be only a
future gain, and in the meanwhile there would not only
be no relief, but the burden imposed upon labor and
capital for the benefit of the present land holders would
be much increased. For one of the elements in the pres-
ent market value of land is the expectation of future
increase of value, and thus, to buy up the lands at mar-
ket rates and pay interest upon the purchase money
would be to saddle producers not only with the payment
of actual rent, but with the payment in full of specula-
tive rent. Or to put it in another way: The land would
be purchased at prices calculated upon a lower than the
ordinary rate of interest (for the prospective increase
in land values always makes the market price of land
much greater than would be the price of anything else
yielding the same present return) , and interest upon the
purchase money would be paid at the ordinary rate.
Thus, not only all that the land yields them now would
have to be paid the land owners, but a considerably
larger amount. It would be, virtually, the state taking
a perpetual lease from the present land holders at a con-
siderable advance in rent over what they now receive.
For the present the state would merely become the
agent of the land holders in the collection of their rents,
and would have to pay over to them not only what they
received, but considerably more.
Mr. Mill’s plan for nationalizing the future “unearned
increase in the v value of land,” by fixing the present
market value of all lands and appropriating to the state
future increase in value, would not add to the injustice
362
JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY
Booh VII.
of the present distribution of wealth, but it would not
remedy it. Further speculative advance of rent would
cease, and in the future the people at large would gain
the difference between the increase of rent and the
amount at which that increase was estimated in fixing
the present value of land, in which, of course, prospec-
tive, as well as present, value is an element. But it
would leave, for all the future, one class in possession
of the enormous advantage over others which they now
have. All that can be said, of this plan is, that it might
be better than nothing.
Such inefficient and impracticable schemes may do to
talk about, where any proposition more efficacious would
not at present be entertained, and their discussion is a
hopeful sign, as it shows the entrance of the thin end of
the wedge of truth. Justice in men's mouths is cring-
ingly humble when she first begins a protest against a
time-honored wrong, and we of the English-speaking
nations still wear the collar of the Saxon thrall, and
have been educated to look upon the 'Vested rights" of
land owners with .all the superstitious reverence that an-
cient Egyptians looked upon the crocodile. But when
the times are ripe for them, ideas grow, even though in-
significant in their first appearance. One day, the Third
Estate covered their heads when the king ' put on his
hat. A little while thereafter, and'the head of a son of
St. Louis rolled from the scaffold. The ' anti-slavery
movement in the United States commenced with talk of
compensating owners, but when four millions of slaves
,were emancipated, the owners got no compensation, nor
did they clamor for any. And by the time the people
of any such country as England or the United States
are sufficiently aroused to the injustice and disadvan-
tages of individual ownership of land to induce them 1x)
attempt its nationalization, they will be sufficiently
aroused to nationalize it in a much more direct and easy
Chap. m. CLAIM OF LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION 363
J
way than by purchase. They will not trouble them-
selves about compensating the proprietors of land.
■ Nor is it right that there should be any concern about
the proprietors of land. That such a man as John Stuart
Mill should have attached so much importance to the
compensation of land owners as to have- urged the con-
fiscation merely of the future increase in rent, is explain-
able only by his acquiescence in the current doctrines
that wages are drawn from capital and that population
constantly tends to press upon subsistence. These
blinded him as to the full effects of the private appro-
priation of land. He saw that 'The claim of the land
holder is altogether subordinate to the general policy
of the state,” and that "when private property in land
is not expedient, it is unjust,” * but, entangled in the
toils- of the Malthusian doctrine,- he attributed, as he
expressly states in a paragraph I have previously
Quoted, the want and suffering that he saw around him
-to "the niggardliness of nature, not to the injustice of
man,” and thus to him the nationalization ofi land
seemed comparatively a little thing, that could accom-
plish nothing toward the eradication of pauperism and
the abolition of want — ends that could be reached only
as men learned to repress a natural instinct. Great as
he was and pure as he was — ^warm heart and noble mind
—he yet never saw' the true harmony of economic laws,
nor realized how from this one great fundamental wrong
' flow want and misery, and vice and shame. Else he
could never have written this sentence: “The land of Ire-
land, the land of every country, belongs to the people of
that country. The individuals called land owners have
no right in morality and justice to anything but the rent,
or compensation for its salable value.”
In the name of the Prophet — figs ! If the land of any
country belong to the people of that country, what
* Principles of Political Economy, Book I, Ghap. 2, Sec. 6.
364
JUSTICE OP THE REMEDY
Book VII.
right, in morality and justice, have the individuals
called land owners to the rent? If the land belong to
the people, why in the name of morality and justice
should the people pay its salable value for their own?
Herbert Spencer says: * “Had we to deal with the
parties who originally robbed the, human race of its
heritage, we might make short "work of the matter.”.
Why not make short work of the matter anyhow? For
this robbery is not like the robbery of a horse or a sum
of money, that ceases with the act. It is a fresh and
continuous robbery, that goes on every day and every
hour. It is not from the produce of the past that rent
is drawn; it is from the produce of the present. It is
a toll levied upon labor constantly and continuously.
Every blow of the hammer, every stroke of the pick,
every thrust of the shuttle, every throb of the steam
engine, pay it tribute. It levies upon the earnings of
the men who, deep under ground, risk their Jives, and
of those who over white surges hang to reeling masts; '
it claims the just reward of the capitalist and the fruits
* Social Statics, page 142. [It may be well to say in the new
reprint of this book (1897) that this and all other references to
Herbert Spencer’s ^'Social Statics” are from the edition of that
book published by D. Appleton & .Co., Hew York, with his
consent, -from 1864 to 1892. At that time “Social Statics" was
repudiated, and a new edition under the name of "Social
Statics, abridged and revised,” has taken its place. From this,
all that the first Social Statics had said in denial of property
in land has been eliminated, and it of course contains nothing
here referred to. 'Mr. Spencer has also been driven by the
persistent heckling of the English single tax men, who insisted
on asking him the questions suggested in the first Social Statics,
to bring out a small volume, entitled “Mr. Herbert Spencer on
the Land Question,” in which are reprinted in parallel columns
Chapter IX of Social Statics, with what he considers valid
answers to himself as given in “Justice,” 1891. This has also
been reprinted by D. Appleton & Co., and constitutes, I tbnm,
the very funniest answer to himself ever made by a man who
claimed to be a philosopher,]
Chap. III. CLAIJI OF LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION 365
of the inventor’s patient effort; it takes little children
from play and from school, and compels them to work '
before their bones are hard or their muscles are firm;
it robs the shivering of warmth ; the hungry, of food ; the
sick, of medicine ; the anxious, of peace. It debases, and
embrutes, and embitters. It crowds families of eight
and ten into a single squalid room; it herds like swine
agricultural gangs of boys and girls; it fills the gin
palace and groggery with those who have no comfort
in their homes; it makes lads who might be useful men
candidates for prisons and penitentiaries ; it fills brothels
with girls who might have known the pure joy of
motherhood; it sends greed and all evil passions prowl-
ing through society as a hard winter drives the wolves
to the abodes of men; it darkens faith in the human
soul, and across the reflection of a just and merciful
Creator draws the veil of a hard, and blind, and cruel
•fate!
It is not merely a robbery in the past; it is a rob-
bery in the present — a robbery that deprives of their
birthright the infants that are now coming into the
world! Why should we hesitate about making short
Work of such a system? Because I was robbed yester-
day, and the day before, and the day before that, is it
any reason that I should suffer myself to be robbed
to-day and to-morrow? any reason that I should con-
clude that' the robber has acquired a vested right to
rob me?
If the land belong to the people, why continue to
permit land owners to take the- rent, or compensate '
them in any manner for the loss of rent? Consider
what rent is. It does not arise spontaneously from
land; it is due to nothing that the land owners have
done. It represents a value' nreated by the whole com-
munity. Let the land holders ’have," if you please, all
that the possession of the land would give them in the
JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY
Boo); VII.
m
absence of the rest of the community. But rent, the
creation of the whole community, necessarily belongs to
the whole community.
Try the case of the land holders by the maxims of the
common law by which the rights of man and man are
determined. The common law we are told is the perfec-
tion of reason, and certainly the land -owners cannot
complain of its decision, for it has been built up by and
for land owners. Now w’hat does the law allow to the
innocent possessor when the land for which he paid
his money is adjudged rightfully to belong to another?
Nothing at all. That he purchased in good faith gives
him no right or claim whatever. The law does not con-
cern itself with the ''intricate question of compensa-
tion” to the innocent purchaser. The law does not say,
as John Stuart Mill says: "The land belongs to A,
therefore E who has thought himself the owner has no
right to anything but the rent, or compensation for its
Salable value.” For that would be indeed like a famous
fugitive slave case decision in which the Coiurt was
said to have given the law to the North and the nigger
to the South, The law simply says: "The land belongs
to A, let the Sheriff put him in possession!” It gives
the innocent purchaser of a wrongful title no claim, it
allows him no compensation. And not only this, it
takes from him all the improvements that he has in
good faith made upon the land. You may have paid a
high price for land, making every exertion to see that
the title is good; you may have held it in undisturbed
possession for years wdthout thought or hint of an ad-
verse claimant; made it fruitful by your toil or erected
upon it a costly building of greater value than the land
itself,' or a modest home in "which you'-hope, surrounded
by the fig-trees you have planted and the vines you
have dressed, to pass your declining days; yet if Quirk,
Gammon & Snap can mouse out a technical flaw in your
parchments or hunt up some forgotten heir who never
Chap III. CLAIM OF LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION 367
t
dreamed of his rights, not merely the land, but all your
improvements, may be taken away from you. And
not merely that. According to the common law, when
you have surrendered the land and given up your im-
provements, you may be called upon to account for the
profits you derived from the land during the time you
had it.
Now if we apply to this case of The People i;5. The
Land Ovraers the same maxims of justice that have been
formulated by land owners into law, and are applied
everj’- day in English and American courts to disputes
between man and man, we shall not only not think of
giving the land holders any compensation for the land,
but shall take all the improvements and whatever else
they may have as well.
But I do not propose, 'and I do not suppose that any
one else will propose, to go so far. It is sufficient if the'
people resume the ownership of the land. Let-the land
owners retain their improvements and personal property
in secure possession.
And in this measure of- justice would be no oppres-
sion, no injury to any class. The great cause of the
present unequal distribution of wealth, with the suf-
fering, degradation, and waste that it entails, would be
swept away. Even land holders would share in the
general gain. The gain of even the large land holders
would be a real one. The gain of the small land holders
■^ould be enormous. For in welcoming Justice, men
Welcome the handmaid of Love. Peace and Plenty
follow in her train, bringing their good gifts, not to '
some, but to all.
, . How true this is, we shall hereafter see.
- If in this chapter I have spoken of justice and expedi-
ency as if justice were one thing and expediency
another, it has been merely to meet the objections of
those who so talk. In justice is the highest and truest
expediency. • '
CHAPTER IV
r-mVATE PROPERTY IN LAND HISTORICALI.Y CONSIDERED
^ What more than anything else prevents the realiza-
tion of the essential injustice of private property in
land and stands in the way of a candid consideration of
any proposition for abolishing it, is that mental habit
which makes anything that has long existed seem
natural and necessary.
We are so used to the treatment of land as individual
property, it is so thoroughly recognized in our laws,
manners, and customs, that the vast majority of people
never .think of questioning it; but look upon it as neces-
sary to the use of land. They are unable to conceive,
or at least it does not enter their heads- to conceive, of
socie'ty as existing or as possible without the reduction
of land to private possession. The first step to the
cultivation or improvement of land seems to them to
get for it a particular ovmer, and a man's land is looked
on by them as fully and as. equitably his, to sell, to
lease, to give, or to bequeath, as his house, his cattle,
his goods, or his furniture. The '^sacredness of prop-
erty” has been preached so constantly and effectively,
especially by those "conservators of ancient barbarism,”
as Voltaire styled the lawyers, that most people look
upon the private ownership of land as the very founda-
tion of civilization, and if the resumption of land as
^common property is suggested, think of it at first blush
either as a chimerical vagary, which never has and
aever can be realized, or as a proposition to overturn
368
Chap. IV.
PEOPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED
369
society from its base and bring about a reversion to
barbarism. . .
If it were true that land had always been treated as
private property, that would not prove the justice or
necessity of continuing so to treat it, any more than
the universal existence of slavery, which might once
have been safely affirmed, would prove the justice or
necessity of making property of human flesh and blood.
Not long ago monarchy seemed all but universal, and
not only the kings but the majority of their subjects
really believed that no country could get along without
a king. Yet, to say nothing of America, France now
gets along without a king; the Queen of England and
Empress of India has about as much to do with gov-
erning her realms as the wooden figurehead of a ship
has in determining its course, and the other crowned
heads of Europe sit, metaphorically speaking, upon
barrels of nitro-glycerine.
Something over a hundred years ago. Bishop Butler,
author of the famous Analogy, declared that “a con-
stitution of civil government without any religious
establishment is a chimerical project of which there is
no example.” As for there being no example, he was
right. No government at that time existed, nor would
it 'have been easy to name one that ever had existed,
'R'ithout some sort of an established religion; yet in the
United States we have since proved by the practice of
a century that it is possible for a civil government to
exist without a state church.
But while, were it true, that land had always, and
everywhere been treated as private property would not
prove that it should always be so treated, this is not
true. On the contrary, the common right to land has
everywhere been primarily recognized, and private
ownership has nowhere grown up save as the result of
■usurpation. The primary and persistent perceptions
370
JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY
Booh VII.
of mankind are that all have an equal right to land,
and the opinion that private property in land is neces-
sary to socjety is but an oflfspring of ignorance that
cannot look beyond its immediate surroundings — an
idea of comparatively modern growth, as artificial and
as baseless as that of the right divine of kings.
The observations of travelers, the researches of the
critical historians who within a recent period have done
so much to reconstruct the' forgotten records of the
people, the investigations of such men as Sir Henry '
Maine, Emile de Laveleye, Professor Nasse of Bonn,
and others, into the growth of institutions, prove that
wherever human society has formed, the common right
of men to the use of the earth has been recognized, and
that nowhere has unrestricted individual ownership
been freely adopted. Historically, as ethically, private
property in land is robbery. It nowhere springs from
contract; it can nowhere be traced to perceptions of
justice or expediency; it has everywhere had its birth in
war and conquest, and in the selfish use which the cun-
ning have made of superstition and law, .
Wherever we can trace the early history of society,
whether in Asia, in Europe, in Africa, in America, or
in Polynesia, land has been considered, as the neces-
sary relations which human life has to it would lead to
its consideration — as common property, in which the
xi^ts of all who had admitted rights were equal. That
is to say, that all members of the community, all citizens,
as we should say, had equal rights to the, use and enjoy-
ment of the land of the community. This recognition
of the common right to land did not prevent the full
recognition of the particular and exclusive right in
things which are the result of labor, nor was it aban-
doned when the development of agriculture had imposed
the necessity of recognizing exclusive possession of land
in order to secure the exclusive enjoyment of the results
Chav. IV. PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED 371
of the labor expended in cultivating it. The division of
land between the industrial units, whether families, joint
families, or individuals, went only as far as was neces-
sary for that purpose, pasture and forest lands being
retained as common, and equality as to agricultural land
being secured, either by a periodical re-division, as
among the Teutonic races, or by the prohibition of
alienation, as in the law of Moses.
This primary adjustment still exists, in more or less
intact form, in the village communities of India, Russia,
and the Sclavonic countries yet, or until recently, sub-
jected to Turkish rule; in the mountain cantons of
Switzerland; among the Kabyles in the north of Africa,
and the Kaffirs in the south; among the native popula-
tion of Java, and the aborigines of New Zealand — that
is to say, wherever extraneous influences have left intact
the form of primitive social organization. That it every-
’where existed has been within late years abundantly
proved by the researches of many independent students
and observers, and which are, to my knowledge, best
summarized in the “Systems of Land Tenure in Various
Countries,” published under, authority of the Cobden
Club, and in M. Emile de Laveleye’s “Primitive Prop-
erty,” to which I would refer the reader who desires to
see this truth displayed in detail.
“In all primitive socities,” says M. de Laveleye, as
the result of an investigation which leaves no part of
the world unexplored — “in' all primitive societies, the
soil was the joint property of the tribes and was subject
to periodical distribution among all the families, so
that all might live by their labor as nature has ordained.
The comfort of each'was thus proportioned to his energy
and intelligence; no one, at any rate, was destitute
of the means of subsistence, and inequality increasing
from generation to generation was provided against.”
If M. de Laveleye be right in this conclusion, and
372
JUSTICE OF THE EEMEDY
Book VII. ■
that lie is right there can be no doubt, how, it will be
asked, has the reduction of land to private ownership
become so general?
The causes which have operated to supplant this
original idea of tlie equal right to the use of land by the
idea of exclusive and unequal rights may, I think, be
everj’-where vaguely but certainly traced. They are
everyw’’here the same which have led to the ‘denial of
equal personal rights and to the establishment of privi-
leged classes.
These causes may be summarized as the concentra-.
tion of power in the hands of chieftains and the mili-
tary class, consequent un a state of warfare, which '
enabled them to monopolize common lands; the effect of
conquest, in reducing the conquered to a state of predial
slavery, and dividing their lands among the conquerors, ,
and in disproportionate share to the chiefs; the dif-
ferentiation and influence of a sacerdotal class, and the
differentiation and influence of a class of professional
lawyers, whose interests were served by the substitution
of exclusive, in place of common, property in land ^
— ^inequality once produced always tending to greater
inequality, by the law of attraction.
It was the struggle between this idea of equal rights
to the soil and the tendency to monopolize it in indi-
vidual possession, that caused the internal conflicts of
Greece and Home; it was the check given to this ten-
dency— in Greece by such institutions as those of
Lycurgus and Solon, and in Home by the Licinian Law
and subsequent divisions of land — ^that gave, to each
their days of strength and glory; and it was the final
triumph of this tendency that destroyed both. Great
♦The influence of the lawyers has been very marked in
Europe, both on the continent and in Great Britain, in de-
stroying all vestiges of the ancient tenure, and substituting
the idea of the Eoman' law, exclusive ownership. ,
Chap. IV. PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED 373
estates ruined Greece, as afterward “great estates
ruined Italy,” ^ and as the soil, in spite of the warnings
of great legislators and statesmen, passed finally into
the possession of a few, population declined, art sank,
the intellect became emasculate, and the race in which
humanity had attained its most splendid development
became a by-word and reproach among men.
The idea of absolute individual property in land,
which modern civilization derived from Rome, reached
its full development there in historic times. When the
future mistress of the world first looms up, each citi-
zen had his little homestead plot, which was inalienable,,
and the general domain — “the corn-land which was of
. public right” — ^v^as subject to common use, doubtless
•under regulations or customs which secured equality,
as in the Teutonic mark and Swiss allmend. It was
from this public domain, constantly extended by con-
quest, that the patrician families succeeded in carving
their great estates. These great estates by the powei
with which the great attracts the less, in spite of tem-
porary checks by legal limitation and recurring divi-
sions, finally crushed out all the small proprietors,
.adding their little patrimonies to the latijundia of the
enormously rich, while they themselves were forced into
■the slave gangs, became rent-paying colonii,' or else
were driven into the freshly conquered foreign prov-
inces, where land was given to the veterans of the
legions; or to the metropolis, to swell the ranks of the
proletariat who had nothing to sell but their votes.
■ Caesarism, soon passing into an unbridled despotisrn
of the Eastern type, was 'the inevitable political result,
and the empire, even while it embraced the world, be-*
came in reality a shell, kept from collapse only by' tho
healthier life of the frontiers, where the land had been
divided among military settlers or the primitive usages
! * Latifimdia perdidere Italiam. — Pliny.
374
JUSTICE OF THE HESIEDY
Booh VII,
longer survived. But the latifundia, which had devoured
the strength of Italy, crept steadily outward, carving
the surface of Sicily, Africa, Spain, and Gaul into great
estates cultivated by slaves or tenants. The hardy
virtues born of personal independence died out, an
exhaustive agriculture impoverished the soil, and wild
beasts supplanted men, until at length, "with a strength
nurtured in equality, the barbarians broke through;
Home perished; and of a civilization once so proud
nothing was left but ruins.
Thus came to pass that marvelous thing, which at
the time of Rome’s grandeur would have seemed as
impossible as it seems now to us that the Comanches
or Flatheads should conquer the United States, or the
Laplanders should desolate Europe. The fundamental
cause is to be sought in the tenure of land. On the one
hand, the denial of the common right to land had re-
sulted in decay; on the other, equality gave strength. .
"Freedom,” says M. de Laveleye (“Primitive, Prop-
erty,” p. 116), "freedom, and, as a consequence, the
ownership of an undivided share of the common prop- -
erty, to which the head of every family in the clan w’^as
equally entitled, were in the German village essential
rights. This system of absolute equality impressed a
remarkable character on the individual, which explains
how small bands of barbarians made themselves masters
•of the Roman Empire, in spite of its skillful administra-
tion, its perfect centralization and its civil law, which
has preserved the name of written reason.’^
It' was, on the other hand, that the heart was eaten
out of that great empire. "Rome perished,” says Pro-
fessor Seeley, "from the failure of the crop of men.”^
In his lectures on the "History of Civilization in
Europe,” and more elaborately in his lectures on the
"History of Civilization in France,” M. Guizot has
vividly described the chaos that in Europe succeeded
Chap. IV. PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED 37S
the fall of the Roman Empire — a chaos which, as he
says, “carried all things in its bosom,” and from which
the structure of modem society was slowly evolved.
It is a picture which cannot be compressed into a few
lines, but suffice it to say that the result of this infu-
sion of -rude but vigorous life into Romanized society
was a disorganization of the German, as well as the
Roman structures — both a blending and an admixture
of the idea of common rights in the soil with the idea of
exclusive property, substantially as occurred in those
provinces of the Eastern Empire subsequently overrun
by the Turks. The feudal system, which was so readily
adopted and so widely spread, was the result of such a
blending; but underneath, and side by side with the
feudal system, a more primitive organization, based on
the common rights of the cultivators, took root or
revived, and has left its traces all over Europe. This
primitive organization, which allots equal shares of
cultiv-ated ground and the common use of uncultivated
ground, and which existed in Ancient Italy as in Saxon
England, has maintained itself beneath absolutism and
serfdom in Russia, beneath Moslem oppression in Ser-
bia, and in India has been swept, but not entirely
destroyed, by wave after wave of conquest, and cen-
tury after century of oppression.
The feudal system, which is not peculiar to Europe,
but seems to be the natural result of the conquest of a
settled coimtry by a race among whom equality and
individuality are yet strong, clearly recognized, in
theory at least, that the land belongs to society at
|arge, not to the individual. Rude outcome of an age
in which might stood for right as nearly as it ever can
(for the idea of right is ineradicable from the human
- mind, and must in some shape show itself even in the
association of pirates and robbers), the feudal system
yet admitted in no one the uncontrolled and exclusive
376
JUSTICE OF THE EEMEDY
Book VII.
right to land. A fief was essentially a trust, and to
Gnjoyment was annexed obligation. The sovereign, the-
oretically the representative of the collective power and
rights of the whole people, was in feudal view the only
absolute owner of land. And though land was granted
to individual possession, yet in its possession were in-
volved duties, by which the enjoyer of its revenues was
supposed to render back to the commonwealth an
equivalent for the benefits which from the delegation
of the common right he received.
In the feudal scheme the crown lands supported pub-
lic expenditures which are now included in the civil,
list; the church lands defraj^ed the cost of public wor-
ship and instruction, of the care of the sick and of the
destitute, and maintained a class of men who were sup-
posed to be, and no doubt to a great extent were, de-
voting their lives to purposes of public good; while the
military tenures provided for the public defense. In
the obligation under which the military tenant lay to
bring into the field such and such a force when need
should be, as well as in the aid he had to give when the
sovereign’s eldest son was knighted, his daughter mar-
ried, or the sovereign himself made prisoner of war, was
a rude and inefficient recognition, but still unquestion-
ably a recognition, of the fact, obvious to the natural
perceptions of all men, that land is not individual but
common property.
Nor yet was the control of the possessor of land
allowed to extend beyond his own life. Although the
principle of inheritance soon displaced the principle of
selection, as where power, is concentrated it always must,
yet feudal law required that there should always be
some representative of a fief, capable of discharging
the duties as well as of receiving the benefits wliich were
annexed to a landed estate, and who this should be was
not left to individual caprice, but rigorously determined
Chav. IV. PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED 377
in advance. Hence wardship and other feudal incidents.
The sj’stem of primogeniture and it-s outgrowth, the
entail, were in their beginnings not the absurdities they
afterward became.
The basis of the feudal system was the absolute own-
ership of the land, an idea which the barbarians readily
acquired in the midst of a conquered population to whom
it was familiar; but over this, feudalism threw a
superior right, and the process of infeudation consisted
of bringing individual dominion into subordination to
the superior dominion, wdiich represented the larger
community or nation. Its units were the land owners,
v/ho by virtue of their ownership were absolute lords
on their own domains, and who there performed the
office of protection which M. Taine has so graphically
described, though perhaps with too strong a coloring,
in the opening chapter of his ‘^Ancient Regime.” The
work of the feudal system was to bind together these
anits into nations, and to subordinate the powers and
rights of the individual lords of land to the powers and
"ights of collective society, as represented by the
suzerain or king.
Thus the feudal system, in its rise and development.
Was a triumph of the idea of the common right to land,
changing an absolute tenure into a conditional tenure,
and imposing peculiar obligations in -return for the
privilege of receiving rent.. And during the same time,
the power of land ownership was trenched, as it were,
from below, the tenancy at will of the cultivators of the
soil very generally hardening into tenancy by custom,
and the rent which the lord could exact from the peasant
becoming fixed and certain.
And amid the feudal system there remained, or there
grew up,, communities of cultivators, more or less sub-
ject to feudal dues, who tilled the soil as common prop-
erty; and although the lords, where and when they had
378
JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY
Book VJI.
the power, claimed pretty much all they thought worth
claiming, yet the idea of common right was strong
enough to attach itself by custom to a considerable part
of the land. The commons, in feudal ages, must have
embraced a very large proportion of the area of most
European countries. For in France (although the ap-
propriations of these lands by the aristocracy, occa-
sionally checked and rescinded by royal edict, had gone
on for some centuries prior to the Revolution, and dur-
ing the Revolution and First Empire large distributions
and sales were made), the common or communal lands
still amount, according to M. de Laveleye, to 4,000,000
hectares, or 9,884,400 acres. The extent of the common
land of England during the feudal ages may be inferred
from the fact that though inclosures by the landed aris-
tocracy began during the reign of Henry VII, it is stated
that no less than 7,660,413 acres of common lands
were inclosed under Acts passed between 1710 and 1843,
of which 600,000 acres have been inclosed since 1845;
and it is estimated that there still remain 2,000,000 acres
of common in England, though of course the most worth-
less parts of the soil, .
In addition to these common lands, there existed in
France, until the R.evolution, and in parts of Spain,
until our own day, a custom having all the force of
law, by which cultivated lands, after the harvest had
been gathered, became common for purposes of pas-,
turage or travel, until the time had come to use the
ground again; and in some places a custom by which
any one had the right to go upon the ground which its
owner neglected to cultivate, and there to sow and reap
a crop in security. And if he "chose to use manure for
the first crop, he acquired the right to sow and gather,
a second crop without let or hindrance from the owner.
It is not merely the Swiss allmend, the Ditmarsh
mark, the Servian and Russian village communities;
Chav. IV. PEOPEBTY IN LAND CONSIDERED 379,
not merely the long ridges which on English ground, now
the exclusive property of individuals, still enable the
antiquarian to trace out the great fields in ancient time
devoted to the triennial rotation of crops, and in which
each villager was annually allotted his equal plotj not
merely the documentary evidence which careful stu-
dents have within late jmars drawn from old records;
but the very institutions under which modern civiliza-
tion has developed, which prove the universality and
long persistence of the recognition of the common right
to the use of the soil.
There still remain in our legal systems survivals that
have lost their meaning, that, like the still existing,
remains of the ancient commons of England, point to.
this. The doctrine of eminent domain, existing as well,
in Mohammedan law, wdiich makes the sovereign the-
oretically the only absolute owner of land, springs from
nothing but the recognition of the sovereign as the
representative of the collective rights of the people;
primogeniture and entail, which still exist in England,
and which existed in some of the American States a
hundred years ago, are but distorted forms of what
was once an outgrowth of the apprehension -of land as
common property. ’ The very distinction made in legal
terminology between real and personal property is but
the survival of a primitive distinction between what was
■ originally looked upon as common property and what
from its nature was always considered the peculiar
property of the individual. And the greater care and
ceremony which are yet required for the transfer of
land is but a survival, now meaningless and useless, of
the more general and ceremonious consent once required
for' the transfer of rights which were looked upon, not
ss belonging to any one member, but to every member
of a family or tribe.
The general course of the development of modern
380
JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY
Book VII
. Civilization since the feudal period has been to the sub-
version of these natural and primary ideas of collective
ownership in the soil. Paradoxical as it may appear,
the emergence of liberty from feudal bonds has been
accompanied by a tendency in the treatment of land to
the form of otvnership which involves the enslavement
of the working classes, and which is now beginning to
be strongly felt all over the civilized world, in the pres-
sure of an iron jmke, which cannot be relieved by any
extension of mere political power or personal liberty,
and which political economists mistake for the pres-
sure of natural laws, and workmen for the oppressions
of capital.
This is clear — ^that in Great Britain to-day the right
of the people as a whole to the soil of their native coun-
try is much less fully acknowledged than it was in feudal
times. A much smaller proportion of the people own the
soil, and their ownership is much more absolute’ The
commons, once, so extensive and so largely contribut-
ing to the independence, and support of the lower
classes, have, all but a small remnant of yet worthless
land, been appropriated to individual owmership and
inclosed; the great estates of the church, which were
essentially common property devoted to a public pur-
pose, have been diverted from that trust to enrich
individuals; the dues of the military tenants have been
shaken off, and the cost of maintaining the military
establishment and paying the interest upon an immense
debt accumulated by wars has been saddled upon the
whole people, in taxes upon the necessaries and com-
forts of life. The crown lands have mostly passed into
private possession, and for the. support of the royal
family and all the petty princelings who marry into it,
the British workman must pay in the price of his mug
of beer and pipe of tobacco. The English yeoman— the
sturdy breed who won Crecy, and Poictiers, and Agm-
Chap. IV.
PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED
38)
court — ^is as extinct as the mastodon. The Scottish clans-
man, whose right to the soil of his native hills was then
as undisputed as that of his chieftain, has been driven
out to make room for the sheep ranges or deer park?
of that chieftain’s descendant; the tribal right of the
Irishman has been turned into a tenancy-at-will'. Thirty
thousand men have legal power to expel the whole
population from five-sixths of the British Islands, and
the vast majority of the British people have no right
whatever to their native land save to walk the streets or
trudge the roads. To them may be fittingly applied the
words of a Tribune of the Roman People: “Men oj
Rome/’ said Tiberius Gracchus — ''men of Rome, you are
called the lords of the world, yet have no right to a
square foot of its soil! The wild beasts have their dens,
but the soldiers of Italy have only water and air!”
The result has, perhaps, been more marked in Eng-
land than anywhere else, but the tendency is observ-
able everywhere, having gone further in England owing
to circumstances which have developed it with greater
rapidity.
The reason, I take it, that with the extension of the
idea of personal freedom has gone on an extension of
the idea of private property in land, is that as in the
progress of civilization the grosser forms of supremacy
connected with land ownership were dropped, or abol-
ished, or became less obvious, attention, was diverted
from the more insidious, but really more potential forms,
and the land owners were easily enabled to put property
in land on the same basis as other property.
The growth of national power, either in the form of
royalty -or parliamentary government, stripped the great
lords of individual power and importance, and of their
jurisdiction and power over persons, and so repressed
striking abuses, as the growi;h of Roman Imperialism
repressed the more striking cruelties of slavery. The
382
JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY
Book VII.
disintegration of the large feudal estates, Tvhich, until
the tendency to concentration arising from the modern
tendency to production upon a large scale is strongly
felt, operated to increase the number of land owners,
and the abolition of the restraints by w^hich land o’Rmers
when population was sparser endeavored to compel
laborers to remain on tlieir estates also contributed to
draw away attention from the essential injustice in-
volved in private property in land; while the steady
progress of legal ideas drawn from the Roman law,
wdiich has been the great mine and storehouse of modern
jurisprudence, tended to level the natural distinction
between property in land and property in other things.
Thus, with the extension of personal liberty, w’^ent on
an extension of individual proprietorship in land.
The political power of the barons was, moreover, not
broken by the revolt of the classes wdio could clearly
feel the injustice of land ownership. Such revolts took
place, again and again; but again and again were they
repressed with terrific cruelties. What broke the power
of the barons was the growi;h of the artisan and trading
classes, between whose wages and rent there is not the
same obvious relation. These classes, ,too, developed
under a system of close guilds and corporations,"' which,
as I have previously explained in treating of trade com-
binations and monopolies, enabled them somewhat to
fence themselves in from the . operation of the general
law of wages, and which were much more easily main-
tained than now, when the effect of improved methods
of transportation, and the diffusion of rudimentary edu-
cation and of current news, is steadily making popula-
tion more mobile. These classes did not see, and do
not yet see, that the tenure of land is the fundamental
fact which must ultimately determine the conditions
of industrial, social, and .political life. * And so the ten-
dency has been to ' assimilate the idea of property in
Chap. IV, PROPERTY IN LAND CONSIDERED 383
land with that of property in things of human produc-
tion, and even steps backward have been taken, and
been hailed, as steps in advance. The Frencli Constitu-
ent Assembly, in 1789, thought it was sweeping away a
relic of tyranny when it abolished tithes and imposed
the support of the clergy on general taxation. The
Abbe Siej^-es stood alone when he told them that they
were simpty remitting to the proprietors a tax which was
one of the conditions on which thej’- held their lands,
and reimposing it on the labor of the nation. But in
vain. The Abbe Sieyes, being a priest, was looked
on as defending the interests of his order, when in
truth he was defending the rights of man. In those
tithes, the French people might have retained a largo
public revenue which would not have taken one cen-
time from the wages of labor or the earnings of capital.
And so the abolition of the military tenures in Eng-
land by the Long Parliament, ratified after the acces--
sion of Charles II, though simply an appropriation of
public revenues by the feudal land holders, wdio thus
got rid of the consideration on which they held the
common property of the nation, and saddled it on the
people at large, in the taxation of all consumers, has
long been characterized, and is still held up in the law
books, as a triumph of the spirit of freedom. Yet here
is the source of the immense debt and heavy taxation
of England. Had the form of these feudal dues been
simply changed into one better adapted to the changed
times, English wars need never have occasioned the
incurring of debt to the amount of a single pound, and
the labor and capital of England need not have been
taxed a single farthing for the maintenance of a mili-
tary establishment. All this would have come from
rent, which the land holders since that time have ap-
propriated to themselves — from the tax which land
ownership levies on the earnings of labor and capital.
384
JUSTICE OP THE EEMEDY
Book VIL
The lanO holders of England got tlieir land on terms
which required them even in the sparse population of
Norman days to put in the field, upon call, sixty thou-
sand perfectly equipped horsemen,* and on the further
condition of various fines and incidents which amounted
to a considerable part of the rent, it would probably
be a low estimate to put the pecuniary value of these’
various services and dues at dne-half the rental value of
the land. Had the land holders been kept to this con-
tract and no land been permitted to be inclosed except
upon similar terms, the income accruing to the nation
from English' land would - to-day be greater by many ’
millions than the entire public revenues of the United
Kingdom. England to-day might have enjoyed absolute
free trade. There need not have been a customs duty,
an excise, license, or income tax, yet all the present ex-
penditures could be met, and a large surplus remain to be
devoted to any purpose which would conduce to the
comfort or well-being of the whole people.
Turning back, wherever there is light to guide us, '
we may everj’^where see that in their first perceptions,
all peoples have recognized the common ownership in
land, and that private property, is an usurpation, a
creation of force and fraud.
As Madame de Stael said, “Liberty is ancient.
Justice, if ' we turn to the most ancient records, will
always be found to have the title of prescription.
* Andrew Bisset, in “The Strength of Nations,” London, 1859,'
a suggestive work in which he calls the attention of the^ English
people ' to this measure by which the land owners avoided the
payment of their rent to the nation, disputes the statement of
Blackstone that a knight’s service was tut for 40 days, and says ^
it was during necessity.
CHAPTER V
OF PROPERTY IN LAlC5 IN THE UNITED STATES '
In the earlier stages of civilization we see that land
is everywhere regarded as common property. And.
turning from the dim past to our own times, we may
see that natui'al perceptions are still the same, and that
■when placed under circumstances in which the influ-
ence of education and habit is weakened, men instinc-
tively recognize the equality of right to the bounty of
nature.
The discovery of gold in California brought together
in a new country men who had been used to look on
land as the rightful subject of individual property, and
of whom probably not one in a thousand had ever
dreamed of drawing any distinction between property
in land and property in anything else. But, for the
' first time in the history of the Anglo-Saxon race, these
nien were brought into contact with land from which
gold could be obtained by the simple operation of wash-
ing it out.
Had the land with which they were thus called upon
to deal been agricultural, or grazing, or forest land, of
peculiar richness; had it been land which derived pecu-
liar value from its situation for ‘commercial purposes.^
, or by reason of the water power which it afforded; or
even had it contained rich mines of coal, iron or lead,
the laiid system to which they had been used would have
been applied, and it would have been reduced to private
ownership in large tracts, as even the pueblo lands o'*
385
386
JUSTICE OF THE EEMEDT
Booh VII.
San Francisco, really the most valuable in the State,
which by Spanish law had been set apart to furnish
homes for the future residents of that city, were reduced'
without any protest worth speaking of. But the novelty
of the case broke through habitual ideas, and threw men
back upon first principles, and it was by common con-
sent declared that this gold-bearing land should remain
common property, of which no one might take more
than he could reasonably use, or hold for a longer time
than he continued to use it. This perception of natural
justice was acquiesced in by the General Government
and the courts, and while placer mining remained of
importance, no attempt was made to overrule this
reversion to primitive ideas. The title to the land re-
mained in the government, and no individual could
acquire more than a possessory claim. The miners in
each district fixed the amount of ground an individual
could take and the amount of work that must he done
to constitute use. If this work were not done, any one
could re-locate the ground. Thus, no one was allowed
to forestall or to lock up natural resources. Labor was
acknowledged as the creator of wealth, was given a
free field, and secured in its reward. The device would
not have assured complete equality of rights under the
conditions that in most countries prevail; but under
the conditions that there and then existed — a sparse .
population, an unexplored country, and an occupation
in its nature a lottery, it secured substantial justice.
One man might strike an enormously rich deposit, and
others might vainly prospect for months and years, but '
all had an equal chance- No one was allowed to play
the dog in the manger with the bounty of the Creator. ,
The essential idea of the mining regulations was to
prevent forestalling and monopoly. Upon the same
principle are based the mining laws of Mexico; and the
same 'principle was adopted in Australia, in British
Chap. V. PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES 387
Columbia, and in the diamond fields of South Africa, for
it accords with natural perceptions of justice.
With the decadence of placer mining in California,
the accustomed idea of private property finally pre-
vailed in the passage of a law permitting the patenting
of mineral lands. The only effect is to lock up oppor-
tunities— ^to give the owner of mining ground the power
of saying that no one else may use what he does not
choose to use himself. And there are many cases in
which mining ground is thus withheld from use for
speculative purposes, just as valuable building lots and
agricultural land are withheld from use. But while thus
preventing use, the extension to mineral land of the
same principle of private ovmership which marks the
tenure of other lands has done nothing for the security
of improvements. The gi’eatest expenditures of capita]
in opening and developing mines — expenditures that in
some cases amounted to millions of dollars — ^were made
upon possessory titles.
-Had the circumstances which beset the first English
settlers in North America been such as to call their
attention de novo to the question of land ownership,
there can be no doubt that they would have reverted to
first principles, just as they reverted to first principles
in matters of government; and individual land owner-
ship would have been rejected, just as aristocracy and
monarchy were rejected. But while in the country from
which they came this system had not yet fully developed
itself, nor its effects been fully felt, the fact that in the
new country an immense continent invited settlement
prevented any question of the justice and policj’" of
private property in land from arising. For in a new
country, equality seems sufficiently assured if no one is
permitted to take land to the exclusion of the rest. At
first no harm seems to be done by treating this land
as absolute property. There is plenty of land left for
S88
JUSTICE OF THE EEAIEDY
Book VIJ.
those who choose to take it, and the slavery that in a
Jater stage of development necessarily springs from the
individual ovmership of land is not felt.
In Virginia and to the South, where the settlement
had an aristocratic character, the natural complement
of the large estates into which the land was carved
was introduced in the shape of negro slaves. But the
first settlers of New England divided the land as, twelve
centuries before, their ancestors had divided the land
of Britain, gmng to each head of a family his town
lot and his seed lot, while beyond Jay the free common.
So far as concerned the great proprietors whom the Eng-
lish kings by letters patent endeavored to create, the
settlers saw clearly enough the injustice of the attempted
monopoly, and none of these proprietors got much from
their grants; but the plentifulness of land prevented
attention from being called to the monopoly which indi-
vidual land ownership, even when the tracts are small,
must involve when land becomes scarce. And so it
has come to pass that the great republic of the modern
■umrld has adopted at the beginning of its career an
institution that ruined the republics of antiquity; that
a people who proclaim the inalienable rights of all men
to life, liberty, and the pmsuit of happiness have ac-
cepted without question a principle which, in denying
the equal and inalienable right to the soil, finally denies
the equal right to life and liberty; that a people who
at the cost of a bloody war have abolished chattel
slavery, yet permit slavery in a more widespread and
dangerous form to take root.
The continent has seemed so wide, the area over
which population might yet pour so vast, that familiar-
ized by habit with the idea of private property in land-
we have not realized its essential injustice. For not
merely has this background of unsettled land prevented
the full effect of private appropriation from being felt.
389
Chav. V. * PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES
even in the older sections, but to permit a man to take
more land than he could use, that he might compel those
who afterwards needed it to pay him for the privilege
of using it, has not seemed so unjust when others, in
their turn might do the same thing by going further
on. And more than this, the very fortunes that have
resulted from the appropriation of land, and that have
thus really been drawn from taxes levied upon the
wages of labor, have seemed, and have been heralded, as
prizes held out to the laborer. In all the newer States,
and even to a considerable extent in the older ones, our
landed aristocracy is yet in its first generation. Those
who have profited by- the increase in the value of land
have been largely men who began life without a cent.
Their great fortunes, many of them running up high
into the millions, seem to them, and to many others, as
the best proofs of the justice of existing social condi-
tions in rewarding prudence, foresight, industry, and
thrift; whereas, the truth is that these fortunes are but
the gains of monopoly, and are necessarily made at the
expense of labor. But the fact that those thus enriched
started as laborers hides this, and the same feeling
which leads every ticket holder in a lottery to delight
in imagination in the magnitude of the prizes has pre-
vented even the poor from quarreling with a system
which thus made many poor men rich.
In short, the American people have failed to see the
essential injustice of private property in land, because
ns yet they have not felt its full effects. This public
domain — ^the vast extent of land yet to be reduced to
private possession, the enormous common to which the
faces of the energetic were always turned, has been the
great fact that, since the days when the first settlements
began to fringe the Atlantic Coast, has formed our
national character and colored our national thought.
It is not that we have eschewed a titled aristocracy and
390
JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY
Booh VII,
abolished primogeniture' that stc elect all our officers
frorn school director up to president; that our laws
run in the name of the people, instead of in the name of
a , prince; that the State knows no religion, and our
judges wear no wigs — ^that we have been exempted from
the ills that Fourth of July orators used to point to as
characteristic of the effete despotisms of the Old World.
The general intelligence, the general comfort, the active
invention, the power of adaptation and assimilation,
. the free, independent spirit, the energy and hopefulness
that have marked our people, are not causes, but results
— ^they have sprung from unfenced land. This public
domain has been the transmuting force which has tmned
the thriftless, unambitious European peasant into the
self-reliant Western farmer; it has given a consciousness
of freedom even to the dweller in crowded cities, and
has been a w^ell-spring of hope even to those who have
never thought of taking refuge upon it. The child of
the people, as he grows to manhood in Europe, finds all
the best seats at the banquet of life marked ''taken,'’
and must struggle with his fellows for the crumbs that
fall, without one chance in a thousand of forcing or
sneaking his way to a seat. In America, whatever his
"condition, there has always been the consciousness that
• the public domain lay behind him; and the knowledge
of this fact, acting and reacting, has penetrated our
whole, national life, giving to it generosity and inde-
pendence, elasticity and ambition. All that we are
proud of in the American character; all that makes
our conditions and institutions ‘ better than those of
older countries, we may trace to the fact that land has
been cheap in the United States, because new soil has
been open to the emigrant. ^
But our advance has reached the Pacific. Further
west we cannot go, and increasing population can but
expand, north and south and fill up what has been passed
Chap. V, PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES 39 J.
over. North, it is already filling up the valley of the
Red River, pressing into, that of the Saskatchewan and
pre-empting Washington Territory; south, it is covering
Western Texas and taking up the arable valleys of New
Mexico and Arizona.
The republic has entered upon a new era, an era in
which tlie monopoly of the land will tell with acceler-
ating effect. The great fact which has been so potent
is ceasing to be. The public domain is almost gone — a
very few years will end its influence, already rapidly
failing. I do not mean to say that there will be no public
domain. For a long time to come there will be millions
of acres of public lands carried on the books of the Land
Department. But it must be remembered that the best
part of the continent for agricultural purposes is already
overrun, and that it is the poorest land- that is left. It
must be remembered that what remains comprises the
great mountain ranges, the sterile deserts, the high plains
fit only for grazing. And it must be remembered that
much of this land which figures in the reports as open
to settlement is unsurveyed land, which has been appro-
priated by possessory claims or locations which do not
appear until the land is returned as surveyed. Cali-
fornia figures on the books of the Land Department as
the' greatest land State of the Union, containing nearly
100,000,000 acres of public land — something like one-
twelfth of the whole public domain. Yet so much of
this is covered by railroad grants or held in the way
of which I have spoken; so much consists of untillable
mountains or plains which require irrigation; so much
is monopolized by locations which command the water,
that as a matter of fact it is difficult to point the immi-
grant to any part of the State where he can take up a
farm on which he can settle and maintain a family, and
so men, weary of the quest, end by buying land or rent-
ing it on shares. It is not that there is any real scarcity
392
JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY
Booy. VJI.
of land in California — for, an empire in herself, Cali-
fornia will some day maintain a population as large as
that of France — but appropriation has got ahead of the
settler and manages to keep just ahead of him.
Some twelve or fifteen years ago the late Ben Wade of
Ohio said, in a speech in the United States Senate, that
by the close of this century every acre of ordinary
agricultural land in the United States would be worth
$50 in gold. It is already clear that if he erred at ail,
it was in overstating the time. In the twenty-one years
that remain of the present century, if our population
keep on increasing at the rate which it has maintained
since the institution of the government, with the excep-
tion of the decade w'hich included the civil war, there
will be an addition to our present population of some-
thing like forty-five millions, an addition of some seven
millions more than the total population of the Uiiited
States as shown by the census of 1870, and nearly half
■ds much again as the present population of Great Britain.
There is no question about the ability of the United
States to support such a population and many hundreds
of millions more, and, under proper social adjustments,
to support them in increased comfort; but in view of
such an increase of population, what becomes of the
unappropriated public domain? Practically there will
soon cease to be any. It will be a very long time before
it is all in use; but it will be a very short time, as we
are going, before all that men can turn to use will have
an' owner. , • '
But the evil effects of making the land of a whole
people the exclusive property of some do not wait for the
final appropriation of the public domain to show them-
selves. It is not necessary to contemplate them in the
futirre; we may see them in the present. They have
grown with our growth, and are still increasing.
We plow new fields, we open new mines, we found new
Chap. V. PROPERTY 'in LAND IN THE UNITED STATES 393
cities; we drive back the Indian, and exterminate the
buffalo; we girdle the land with iron roads and lace the
air with telegraph wires; we add knowledge to knowl-
edge, and utilize invention after invention; we build
schools and endow colleges; yet it becomes no easier
for the masses of our people to make a living. On the
contrary, it is becoming harder. The wealthy class is
becoming more wealthy; but the poorer class is becom-
ing more dependent. The gulf between the employed
and the employer is growing wider; social contrasts are
becoming sharper; as liveried carriages appear, so do.
barefooted children. We are becoming used to talk of
the working classes and the propertied classes; beggars
are becoming so common that where it was once thought
a crime little short of highway robbery to refuse food
to one who asked for it, the gate is now barred and the
bulldog loosed, while laws are passed against vagrants
^'hich suggest those of Henry VIII.
We call ourselves the most progressive people on earth.
But what is the goal of our progress, if these are its
."wayside fruits?
These are the results of private property in land — ^the
effects of a principle that must act. with increasing and
increasing force. It is not that laborers have increased
faster than capital; it is not that population is pressing,
against subsistence; it is not that machinery has made
Vork scarce;” it is not that there is any real antagonism
between labor and capital — it is simply that land is
becoming more valuable; that the terms on which labor
can obtain access to the natural opportunities which
alone enable it to produce are becoming harder and
harder. The public domain is receding and narrowing.
Property, in land is concentrating. The proportion of,
^ur people who have no legal right to the land on .which
they live is becoming- steadilj- larger.
Says the New York World: “A non-resident pro-
394
JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY
Boo?. Vll
prietary, like that of Ireland, is getting to be the char-
acteristic of large fanning districts in New England,
adding yearly to the nominal value of leasehold farms;
advancing yearly the rent demanded, and steadily de-
grading the character of the tenantry.” And the Nation,
alluding to the same section, says: "Increased nominal
value of land, higher rents, fewer farms occupied by
owners; diminished product; lower wages; a more igno-
rant population; increasing number of women employed
at hard, outdoor labor (surest sign of a declining civili-
zation), and a steady deterioration in the style of fann-
ing— ^these are the conditions described by a cumulative
mass of evidence that is perfectly irresistible.”
The same tendency is observable in the new States,
where the large scale of cultivation recalls the latijundia
that ruined ancient Italy. In California a very large
proportion of the farming land is rented from year to
year, at rates varying from a fourth to even half the
crop.
The harder times, the lower wages, the increasing
poverty perceptible in the United States are but results ^
of the natural laws we have traced — laws as universal
and as irresistible as that of gravitation. We did not
establish the republic when, in the face of principalities
and powers, we flung the declaration of the inalienable
rights of man; we shall never establish the republic until
we practically carry out that declaration by securing
to the poorest child born among us an equal right to ,
his native soil! We did not abolish slavery when we
ratified the Fourteenth Amendment; to abolish slavery ,
we must abolish private property' in land! Unless we
come back to first principles, unless we recognize natural
perceptions of equity, imless we acknowledge the equal
right of all to land, our free institutions will be in vain;
our common schools will be in vain; our discoveries and
inventions will but add to the force that presses the
masses down!
BOOK VIII
APPLICATION OF THE EEMEDY
CHAPTER I.— PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND INCONSISTENT WITH
THE BEST USE OP LAND
CHAPTER n.— HOW EQUAL RIGHTS TO THE LAND MAY BE
ASSERTED AND SECURED
CHAPTER III.— THE PROPOSITION TRIED BY THE CANONS OP
, TAXATION
CHAPTER rv.— INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS
Why hesitate? Ye are full-bearded men,
With God-implanted will, and courage if
Ye dare but show it. Never yet was will
But found some way or means to work it out,
Nor e’er did Fortune frown on him who dared.
Shall we in presence of this grievous wrong.
In this supr.emest moment of all time.
Stand trembling, cowering, when with one bold stroke
These groaning millions might be ever free? — •
And that one stroke so just, so greatly good,
So level with the happiness of man.
That all the angels T^l applaud the deed.
— E. R. Taylor,
CHAPTER I
PEWATE PEOPERTY IN LAND INCONSISTENT WITH THE
BEST USE OF LAND
There is a delusion resulting from the tendency to
confound the accidental with the essential — a delusion
which the law writers have done their best to extend,
and political economists generally have acquiesced in,
rather than endeavored to expose — ^that private property
in land is necessary to the proper use of land, and that
again to make land common property would be to
destroy chdlization and revert to barbarism.
This delusion may be likened to the idea which,
according to Charles Lamb, so long prevailed among the
Chinese after the savor of roast pork had been acci-
dentally discovered by the burning down of Ho-ti’s hut
. — ^that to cook a pig it was necessary to set fire to a
house. But, though in Lamb’s charming dissertation it
Was required that a sage should arise to teach people that
they might roast pigs without burning down houses, it
does not take a sage to see that what is required for the -
improvement of land is not absolute ownership of the
land, but security for the improvements. This will be
obvious to whoever will look around him. While there
. IS no more necessity for making a man the absolute and
exclusive owner of land,- in order to induce him to im-,
prove it, than there is of burning down a house in ordei
to cook a pig; while the making oMand private prop-
erty is as rude, wasteful, and -uncertain a device foi
securing improvement, as the burning down of a house
397 ..
398
APPLICATION OP THE REMEDY
Booh VIII.
is a nide, wasteful, and uncertain device for roasting a
pig, we have not the excuse for persisting in the one
that Lamb’s Chinamen had for persisting in the other.
Until the sage arose who invented the rude gridiron,
which, according to Lamb, preceded the spit and oven,
no one had known or heard of a pig being roasted,
except by a house being burned. But, among us, noth-
ing is more common than for land to be improved by
those who do not own it. The greater part of the land of
Great Britain is cultivated by tenants, the greater part
of the buildings of London are built upon leased ground,
and even in the United States the same system prevails
everywhere to a greater, or less extent. Thus it is a
common matter for use to be separated from ownership.
Would not all this land be cultivated and improved
just as well if the rent went to the State or municipality,
as now, when it goes to private individuals? If no
private ownership in land were acknowledged, but all
land were held in this way, the occupier or user paying
rent to the State, would not land be used and improved
as well and as securely ,as now? There can he hut one
answer: Of course it would. Then would the resump-
tion of land as common property in- nowise interfere
with the proper use and improvement of land.
What is necessary for the use of land, is not its private
ownership, but the security of improvements. It is not
necessary to say to a man, ‘This land is yours,” in order
to induce him to cultivate or improve it. It is only
necessary to say to him, “whatever your labor or capital
produces on this land shall be yoiirs.” Give a man se-
curity that he may reap, and he will sow; assure him of
the possession of the house he wants to build, and he
will build it. These are the natural rewards of labor.
It is for the sake of the reaping that men sow; it is
for the sake of possessing houses that men build. The
ownership of land has nothing to do with it.
Chap. I. OWIvnERSHIP AND THE USE OF LAND 399^
It was for the sake of obtaining this security, that
in the beginning of the feudal period so many of the
smaller land holders surrendered the ownership of their
lands to a militaiy chieftain, receiving back the use of
them in fief or trust, and kneeling bareheaded before
the lord, wdth their hands between his hands, swore to
serve him with life, and limb, and worldly honor..
Similar instances of the giving up of ownership in land
for the sake of security in its enjoyment are to be seen,
in Turkey, where a peculiar exemption from taxation
and extortion attaches to vakouf, or church lands, and
where it is a common thing for a land owner to sell his-
land to a mosque for a nominal price, with the under-
standing that he may remain as tenant upon it at a.
fixed rent.
It is not the magic of property, as Arthur Young said,
that has turned Flemish sands into fruitful fields. It.
is the magic of security to labor. This can be secured
in other ways than making land private property, just
^s the heat necessary to roast a pig can be secured in
other ways than by burning down houses. The mere
_ pledge of an Irish landlord that for twenty years he-
yould not claird in rent any share in their cultivation
induced Irish peasants to turn a barren mountain intO'
gardens; on the mere security of a fixed ground rent,
fpr a term of years the most costly buildings of such
oities as London and New York are erected on leased
grounu. If we -give improvers such security, we may
safely abolish private proj^erty in land.
The complete recognition of common rights to land
need in no way interfere with the complete recognition
of individual right to improvements or produce. Two.
may own a ship without sawing her in half. The
ownership of a railway may be divided into a hundred.
■ thousand shares, and yet trains be run with as much,
system and precision as if there were but a single owner.
400
APPLICATION OP THE REMEDY
Book VI JL
In London, joint stock companies have been formed to
hold and manage real estate. Everything could go on
as now, and yet the common right to land be fully recog-
nized by appropriating rent to the common benefit.
There is a lot in the center of San Francisco to which
the common rights of the people of that city are yet
legall}’’ recognized. This lot is not cut up into infinitesi-
mal pieces nor yet is it an unused waste. It is covered
with fine buildings, the. property of private individuals,
that stand there in perfect securit3L The only difference
between this lot and those around it, is that the rent of
the one goes into the common school fund, the rent
of the others into private pockets. What is to prevent
the land of a whole country being held by the people
of the country in this way?
It would be difiicult to select any portion of the ter-
ritory of the United States in which the conditions com-
monly taken to necessitate the reduction of land to
private ownership exist in higher degree than on -the little
islets of St. Peter and St. Paul, in the Aleutian Archi-
pelago, acquired by the Alaska purchase from Russia.
These islands are the breeding places of the fur seal,
an animal so timid and wary that the slightest fright
causes it to abandon its accustomed resort, never to
return. To prevent the utter destruction of this fishery,
without which the islands are of no use to man, it is
not only necessary to avoid killing the females and
young cubs, but even such noises as the discharge of a
pistol or the barking of a dog. The men who do the
killing must be in no hurry, but quietly walk around
among the seals who line the rocky beaches, until the
timid animals, so clumsy on land but so graceful in
water, show no more sign of fear than lazily to waddle
out of the way. Then those who can be killed without
diminution of futm-e increase are carefully separated
and gently driven inland, out of sight and hearing of
Chap. I. OWKERSHIP AND THE USE OF LAND 401
the herds, where thej”- are dispatched with clubs. To
throw such a fishery as this open to whoever chose to
go and kill — which would make it to the interest of each
party to kill as man}* as thej^ could at the time without
reference to the future — would be utterly to destroy it
in a few seasons, as similar fisheries in other oceans have
been destroyed. But it is not necessary, therefore, to
make these islands private property. Though for rea-
sons greatlj’- less cogent, the great public domain of the
American people has been made over to private owner-
ship as fast as anybody could be got to take it, these
islands have been leased at a rent of $317,500 per year,*
probablj^ not verj’’ much less than they could have been
sold for at the time of the Alaska purchase. They have
already yielded two millions and a half to the national
treasury, and they are still, in unimpaired value (for
-iinder the careful management of the Alaska Fur Com-
pany the seals increase rather than diminish), the
common property of the people of the United States.
So far from the recognition of private property in
land being necessarj’’ to the proper use of land, the con-
trary is the case. Treating land as private property
stands in the way of its proper use. Were land treated .
as public property it would be used and . improved as
soon as there was need, for its use or improvement, but
being treated as private property, the individual owner
is permitted to prevent others from using or improving
^hat he cannot or will not use or improve himself.
When the title is in dispute, the most valuable land lies
unimproved for years; in many parts of England im-
' provement is stopped because, the estates being entailed,
uo security to improvers can be given; and large tracts
. * The fixed rent under the lease to the Alaska Fur Company
IS 855,000 a year, with a payment of 82.62% on each skin, which
oa 100,000 skins, to w’hich the take is limited, amounts to 8262,-
- 500— a total rent of $317,500.
402
APPLICATION OF THE EEMEDT
Book VIII.
of ground which, were they treated as public property,
W'ould be covered with buildings and crops, are kept
idle to gratify the caprice of the owner. In the thickly
settled parts of the United States there is enough land
to maintain three or four times bur present population,
lying unused, because its owners are holding it for higher
prices, and immigrants are forced past this unused land
to seek homes where their labor will be far less pro-
ductive. In every city valuable lots may be seen lying
vacant for the same reason. If the best use of land be
the test, then private property in land is condemned, as
it is condemned by every other consideration. It is
as wasteful and uncertain a mode of securing the proper
use of land as the burning down of houses is of roast-
ing; pigs.
CHAPTER II
How EQUAL EIGHTS TO THE LAND MAY BE ASSEKTED AND
• SECURED
We have traced the want and suffering that every-
where prevail among the working classes, the recurring
paroxysms of industrial depression,- the scarcity of em-
ployment, the stagnation of capital, the tendency of
"Wages to the starvation point, that exhibit themselves
more and more strongly as material progress goes on, to
the fact that the land on which and from which all must
live is made the exclusive property of some.
We have seen that there is no possible remedy for
these evils but the abolition of their cause ; we have seen
that private property in land has no warrant in
but stands condemned as the denial of natural right a
subversion of the law of nature that as social develop-
ment goes on must condemn the masses of men to a
slavery the hardest and most degrading.
We have weighed every objection, and seen that
neither on the ground of equity or expediency is there
anything to deter us from making land common prop-
erty by confiscating rent.
But a question of method remains. How shall we
do' it?
We should satisfy the law of justice, we should^ meet
all economic requirements, by at one stroke abolishing
all private titles, declaring all land public property, and
letting it out to the highest bidders in lots to suit, under
such conditions as would sacredly guard the private right
^0 improvements.
403
404
APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY
Book VIII.
Thus wc should secure, in a more complex state of
society, the same equality of rights that in a ruder state
were secured by equal partitions of the soil, and by
giving the use of the land to whoever could procure
the most from it, we should secure the greatest pro-
duction.
Such a plan, instead of being a wild, impracticable
vagary, has (with the exception that he suggests com-
pensation to the present holders of land — ^undoubtedly .a
careless concession which he upon reflection would recon-
sider) been indorsed by no less eminent a thinker than
Herbert Spencer, v/ho (“Social Statics,” Chap, IX, Sec.
8) says of it;
"Such a doctrine is consistent with the highest state of civiliza-
tion; may be carried out without involving a community of
goods, and need catise n.o very serious revolution in existing
arrangements. The change required would simply be a change
of landlords. Separate orriiership would merge into the joint-
stock ownership 'of the public. Instead of being in the posses-
sion of individuals, the country would be held by the great
corporate body — society. Instead of leasing his acres from an
isolated proprietor, the fanner would lease them from the nation. ■
Instead of paying his -rent to the agent of Sir John or his Grace,
he would pay it to an agent or deputy agent of the community.
Stewards would be public officials instead of private ones, and
tenancy the only land tenure. A state of things so ordered
would be in perfect harmony .with the moral law. Under it all
men would be equally landlords, all men would be alike free
to become tenants. * ,* Clearb'-, therefore, on such a sys-
tem; the earth might be enclosed, occupied and cultivated, in,
entire subordination to the law of -equal freedom.”
But such a plan, though perfectly feasible, does not
seem to me the best. Or rather I propose to accomplish
the same thing in a simpler, easier, and quieter way,
than that, of formally confiscating all the land and
formally letting it out to the highest bidders. ■
To do that would involve a -needless shock to present
customs and habits of thought— which is to be avoided.
To do that- would’ involve a needless extension of
governmental machinery — which is to be avoided.
Chap. II. HOW EQUAL RIGHTS MAY BE ASSERTED
405'
It is an axiom of statesmanship, which the successful
sounders of tyranny liave -understood and acted upon —
that great changes can best be brought about under old
forms. We, who would free men, should heed the same
truth. It is the natural method. When nature would
p3ake a higher type, she takes a lower one and develops
it. This, also, is the law of social growth. Let us work
hy it. With the current we may glide fast and far.
Against it, it is hard pulling and slow progress.
I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate
private property in land. The first would ,be unjust;
the second, needless. Let the indi\dduals who now hold
it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they
3re pleased to call their land. Let them continue to
call it their land. Let them buj’’ and sell, and bequeath
and devise it. We maj'- safely leave them the shell, if we
take the kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land;
'd is only necessary to confiscate rent.
Hor to take rent for public uses is it necessary that
the State should bother with the letting of .lands, and
assume the chances of the favoritism, collusion, and
‘Corruption this might involve. It is not necessary that
nny new machinery should be created. The machinery
already exists. ’ Instead of extending it, all we have to ,
'to is to simplify and reduce it. By leaving to land
owners a percentage of rent which would probably be
®nch less than the cost and loss involved in attempting
to rent lands through State agency, and by making use
of this existing machinery, we may, without jar or shock,
assert the common right to land by taking rent for public
Uses.
We already take some rent in taxation. We have
®uly to make some changes in our modes of taxation
tolakeitall.
_ What I, therefore, propose, as the simple yet sover-
. cign remedy, which will raise wages, increase the earn-
^gs of capital, extirpate pauperism, abolish poverty,
406
APPLICATION OF THE HEMEDY
Boofc VIII.
give remunerative employment to whoever wishes it,
afford free scope to human po'wers, lessen crime, elevate
morals, and taste, and intelligence, purify government
and carry civilization to yet nobler heights, is — to
appropriate rent by taxation.
In this way the State may become the universal land-
lord without calling herself so, and without assuming a
single new function. In form, the ownership of land
would remain just as now. No owner of land need be
dispossessed, and no restriction need be placed upon
the amount of land any one could hold. For, rent being
taken by the State in taxes, land, no matter in whose
name it stood, or in what parcels it was held, would be
really common property, and every member of the
community would participate in the advantages of its
ownership.
Now, insomuch as the taxation of rent, or land values,
must necessarily be increased just as we abolish other
taxes, we may put the proposition into practical form
by proposing —
To abolish all taxation save that upon land values.
As we have seen, the value of land is at the beginning
of society nothing, but as society develops by the in-
crease of population and the advance of the arts, it
becomes greater and greater. In every civilized coun-
try, even the newest, the value of the land taken as a
whole is sufficient to bear the entire expenses of govern-
ment. In the better developed countries it is much more
than sufficient. Hence it 'will not be enough merely to
place all taxes upon the value of land. It will be neces'
sary, where rent exceeds the present governmental reve-
nues, commensurately to increase the amount demanded
in taxation, and to continue this increase as society pro-
gresses and rent advances. But this is so natural and
easy a matter, that it may be considered as involved, or
at least understood, in the proposition to put all taxes
Chap. II. HOW EQUAL RIGHTS MAY BE ASSERTED
407
on the value of land. That is the first step, upon which
the practical struggle must be made. When the hare
is once caught and killed, cooking him will follow as a
matter of course. When the common right to land is so
far appreciated that all taxes are abolished save those
■which fall upon rent, there is no danger of much more
than is necessary to induce them to collect the publiq
revenues being left to individual land holders.
Experience has taught me (for I have been for some
years endeavoring to popularize this proposition) that
■wherever the idea of concentrating all taxation upon
land values finds lodgment sufficient to induce considera-
tion, it invariably makes way, but there are few of the
classes most to be benefited by it, who at first, or even
for a long time afterward, see its full significance and
power. It is difficult for workingmen to get over the idea,
that there is a real antagonism between capital and
labor. It is difficult for small farmers and homestead
owners to get over the idea that to put all taxes on the
"Value of land would be unduly to tax them. It is diffi-
cult for both classes to get over the idea that to exempt
capital from taxation would be to make the rich richer,
and the poor poorer. These ideas spring from confused
thought. But behind ignorance and prejudice there is a
powerful -interest, which has hitherto dominated litera-
ture, education, and opinion, A great wrong always dies
l^urd, and the great wrong which in every civilized
country condemns the masses of men to poverty and
"Want, will not die without a bitter struggle,
I do not think the ideas of which I speak can be
entertained by the reader who has followed me thus
' fur; but inasmuch as any popular discussion must deal
^_ith the concrete, rather than the abstract, let me ask
uim to follow me somewhat further, that we may try
fhe remedy I have proposed by the accepted canons of
taxation. In doing so, many incidental bearings may
-c seen that otherwise might escape notice.
CHAPTER III
THE PEOPOSmON TEIED BY THE CANONS OF TAXATION
\
The best tax by which public revenues can be raised
is evidently that which will closest conform to the fol-
lowing conditions:
1. That it bear as lightly as possible upon produc-
tion— so as least to check the increase of the general
fund from which taxes must be paid and the commu-
nity maintained.
2. That it be easily and cheaply collected, and fall
as directly as may be upon the ultimate payers — so as ,
to take from the people as little as possible in addition
to what it yields the government.
3. That it be certain — so as to give , the least oppor-
tunity for tyranny or corruption on the part of officials,
and, the least temptation to law-breaking and evasion
on the part of the taxpayers.
4. That it bear equally— so as to give no citizen an -
advantage or put any at a disadvantage, as compared,
with others.
Let us consider what form of taxation best accords
with these conditions. Whatever it be, that evidently
will be the best mode in which the public revenues can
be raised.
1. — The Effect of Taxes upon Production
Jill taxes must evidently come from the produce of
land and labor, since there is no other source of wealth
than the union of human exertion with the material and
Chap. in.
CAKONS OF TAXATION
409
forces of nature. But the manner in which equal
amounts of taxation may be imposed maj^ very differ-
ently affect the production of wealth. Taxation which
lessens the reward of the . producer necessarily lessens
the incentive to production; taxation which is condi-
tioned upon the act of production, or the use of any of
the tliree factors of production, necessarily discourages
production. Thus taxation which diminishes the earn-
ings of the laborer or the returns of the capitalist tends
to render the one less industrious and intelligent, the
other less disposed to save and invest. Taxation which
falls upon the processes of production interposes an arti-
ficial obstacle to the creation of wealth. Taxation which
falls upon labor as it is exerted, wealth as it is used
as capital, land as it is cultivated, will manifestly
fend to discourage production much more powerfully
than taxation to the same amount levied upon laborers,
■whether they work or play, upon wealth whether used
productively or unproductively, or upon land whether
cultivated or left waste.
The mode of taxation is, in fact, quite as important
as the amount. As a small burden badly placed may
, distress a horse that could carry with ease a much
larger one properly adjusted, so a people may be im-
poverished and their power of producing wealth de-
stroyed by taxation, which, if levied in another way,
could be borne with ease. A tax on ^date-trees, imposed
hy Mohammed Ali, caused the Egyptian fellahs to cut
down their trees; but a tax of twice the amount imposed
on the land produced no such result. The tax of ten
per cent, on all sales, imposed by the Duke of Alva in
the Netherlands, would, had it been maintained, have
^11 but stopped exchange while yielding but little
revenue.
But We need not go abroad for illustrations The
production of- wealth in the United States is .largely les-
410
Booh VIII,
■ [■
APPLICATION OP THE EEMEDY
taxation which bears upon its processes.
Ship-building, in which we excelled, has been all but' de-
stroyed, so far as the foreign trade is concerned, and
many branches of production and exchange seriously
crippled, by taxes which divert industry from more to
less productive forms.
This checking of production is in greater or less degree
characteristic of most of the taxes by which the revenues
of modern governments are raised. All taxes upon
manufactures, all taxes upon commerce, all taxes upon
capital, all taxes upon improvements, are of this kind.
Their tendency is the same as that of Mohammed Ali’s
tax on date-trees, though their effect may not be so
clearly seen.
All such taxes have a tendency to reduce the produc-
tion of wealth, and should, therefore, never be resorted
to when it is possible to raise money by taxes which do
not check production. This becomes possible as society
develops and wealth accumulates. Taxes which fall
upon ostentation would simply turn into the public
treasury what otherwise would be wasted in vain show
for the sake of show; and taxes upon wills and devises
of the rich would probably have little effect in checking
the desire for accumulation which, after it has fairly '
got hold of a man, becomes a blind passion.. But the
great class of taxes from which revenue may be derived
without interference with production are taxes upon
monopolies — for the profit of monopoly is in itself a tax
levied upon production, and to tax it is simply to divert
into the public coffers what production must. in any
event pay.
There are among us various sorts of monopolies. For
instance, there are the temporary monopolies created by
the patent and copyright laws. These it would be ex-
tremely unjust and unwise- to tax, inasmuch as they
are but recognitions of the right of labor to its intangible
Chap. III. THE CANONS OF TAXATION ^ 411
productions, and constitute a reward held out to inven-
tion and authorship* There are also the onerous
monopolies alluded to in Chapter IV of Book III, which
result from the aggregation of capital in businesses
which are pf the nature of monopolies. But while it
would be extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible,
* Following the habit of confounding the exclusive right
granted by a patent and that granted by a copyright as recog-
nitions of the right of labor to its intangible productions, I in
this fell into error which I subsequently acknowledged and cor-
rected in the Standard of June 23, 1888. The two things are
not alike, but essentially different. The copyright is not a right
to, the exclusive use of a fact, an idea, or a combination, which
hy the natural law of property all are free to use ; but only to
the labor expended in the thing itself. It does not prevent
nny one from using for himself the facts, the knowledge, thff
laws or combinations for a similar production, but only from
nsing th§ identical form of the particular book or other pro-
duction— ^the actual labor which has in short been expended in
producing it. It rests therefore upon the natural, moral right of
®ach one to enjoy the products of his own exertion, and involves
. no interference with the similar right of any one else to do
likewise.
The patent, on the other hand, prohibits any one from doing
^ similar thing, and involves, usually for a specified time, an
interference with the equal liberty on which the right of owner-
®l^ip rests. The copyright is therefore in accordance with the
moral law — it gives to the man who has expended the intangible
labor required to write a particular book or paint a picture
security against the copying of that identical thing. The patent
Is in defiance of this natural right. It prohibits others from
doing what has been already attempted. Every one has s ,
moral right to think what I think, or to perceive what I perceive,
or to do what I do — ^no matter whether he gets the hint from
me or independently of me. Discoveiy can give no right of
ownership, for whatever is discovered must have been already
here to be discovered. If a man make a wheelbarrow, or a
book, or a picture, he has a moral right to that particular
wheelbarrow, or book, or picture, but no right to ask that others
be prevented from making similar things. Such a prohibition,
though given for the purpose of stimulating discoveiy and
mvention, really in the long run operates as a check upon them.
412
APPLICATION" OF THE REilEDY
BaoJ; VIJJ.
to le\'y taxes by general law so that they’ would fall
exclusively on the returns of such monopoly and not
become taxes on production or exchange, it is much
better that these monopolies should be abolished. In
large part they spring from legislative commission, or
omission, as, for instance, the ultimate reason that San
Francisco merchants are compelled to pay more for
goods sent direct from New York to San Francisco by
the Isthmus route than it costs to ship them from- New
York to Liverpool or Southampton and thence to San
Francisco, is to be found in the ''protective” laws which
make it so costly to build American steamers and which
forbid foreign steamers to carry goods between Ameri-
can ports. The reason that residents of Nevada are
compelled to pay as much freight from the East as
though their goods were carried to San Francisco and
back again, is that the authority which prevents extor-
tion on the part of a hack driver is not exercised in
respect to a railroad company. And it may be said
generally that businesses which are in their nature
monopolies are properly part of the functions of the
State, and should be assumed by the State. There is
the same reason why Government should carry tele-
graphic messages as that it should carry letters; that
railroads should belong to the public as that, common
roads should. ■ ' ' ■
But all other monopolies are trivial in extent as com-
pared with the monopoly of land. And the value of
land expressing a monopoly, pure and simple, is in every
respect fitted for taxation. That is to say, while the'
value of a railroad or telegraph line, the price of gas
or of a patent medicine, may express the price of
monopoly, it also expresses the exertion of labor and
capital; but the value of land, or economic rent, as we
have seen, is in no part made up from these factors,
and expresses nothing but the advantage of appropria-
Chap. 111. THE CANONS OF TAXATION 413
tion. Taxes levied upon the value of land cannot check
production in the slightest degree, until they exceed
rent, or the value of land taken annually,^ for unlike
taxes upon commodities, or exchange, or capital, or any
of the tools or processes of production, they do not bear
upon production. The value of land does not express the
reward of production, as does the value of crops, of
cattle, of buildings, or any of the things which are styled
personal property and improvements. It expresses the
exchange value of monopoly. It is not in any case the
creation of the individual who owns the land; it is
created by the growth of the community. Hence the
community can take it all without in any way lessening
the incentive to improvement or in the slightest degree
lessening the production of wealth. Taxes may be im-
posed upon the value of land until all rent is taken by
the State, without reducing the wages of labor or the
reward of capital one iota ; without increasing the pricf-
of a single commodity, or making production in an3
Way more difficult.
But more than this. Taxes on the value of land not
only do not check production as do most other taxes,
but they tend to increase production, by destroying
speculative rent. How speculative rent checks produc-
don.may be seen not only in the valuable land with-
held from use, but in the paroxysms of industrial
depression which, originating in the speculative advance
in land values, propagate themselves over the whole
.civilized world, everywhere paralyzing industry, and
causing more waste and probably more suffering than
Would a general war. Taxation which would.- take rent
for public uses would prevent all this; while if land
Were taxed to anything near its rental .value, no one
could afford to hold land that he was not using, and,
consequently, land not in use would be thrown open to
■ those who would use it. Settlement would be closer, and, ,
414
APPLICATION OP THE HEMEDT
Book VIJL
consequently, labor and capital would be enabled to
produce much more with the same exertion. The dog in
the manger who, in this country especially, so. wastes
productive power, would.be choked off.
There is yet an even more important way by which,
through its effect upon distribution, the taking of rent
to public uses by taxation would stimulate the produc-
tion of wealth. But reference to that may be reserved.
It is sufficiently evident that with regard to production,
the tax upon the value of land is the best tax that can
be imposed. Tax manufactures, and the effect is to
check manufacturing; tax improvements, and the effect
is to lessen improvement; tax commerce, and the effect
is to prevent exchange; tax capital, and the effect is to
drive it away. But the whole value of land may be
taken in taxation, and the only effect will be to stimulate
industry, to open new opportunities to capital, and to
increase the production of wealth.
II. — As to Ease and Cheapness of Collection
, With, perhaps, the exception of certain licenses and
stamp duties, which may be made almost to collect
themselves, but which can be relied on for only a
trivial amount of revenue, a tax upon land values can,
of all taxes, be most easily and cheaply collected. For
land cannot be hidden or carried off; its value can be
readily ascertained, and the assessment once made, noth-
ing but a receiver is required for collection.
And as under all fiscal systems some part of the public
revenues is collected from taxes on land, and the ma-
chinery for that pxirpose already exists and could as
well be made to collect all ,as a part, the cost of collect-
ing the revenue now obtained by other taxes might be
entirely saved by substituting the tax on land values
for all other taxes. What an enormous saving might
Chap. HI.
THE CANONS OF TAXATION
415
thus be made can be inferred from the horde of officials
now engaged in collecting these taxes.
This saving would largely reduce the difference be-
tween what taxation now costs the people and what it
yields, but the substitution of a tax on land values for
all other taxes would operate to reduce this difference
m an even more important way.
A tax on land values does not add to prices, and is
thus paid directly by the persons on whom it falls;
'W’hereas, all taxes upon things of unfixed quantity in-
crease prices, and in the course of exchange are shifted
irom seller to buyer, increasing as they go. If we im-
pose a tax upon money loaned, as has been often
attempted, the lender will charge the tax to the borrower,
and the borrower must pay it or not obtain the loan,
tf the borrower uses it in his business, he in his turn
aiust get back the tax from his customers, or his busi-
ness becomes unprofitable. If we impose a tax upon
buildings, the users of buildings must finally pay it, for
the erection of buildings will cease until building rents
become high enough to pay the regular profit and the
tax besides. If we impose a tax upon manufactures or
^ported goods, the manufacturer or importer will
charge it in a higher price to the jobber, the jobber to
the retailer, and the retailer to the consumer. Now, the
consumer, on whom the tax thus ultimately falls, must
uot only pay the amount of the tax, but also a profit
uu this amount to every one who has thus advanced it
n^for profit on the capital he has advanced in paying
taxes is as much required by each dealer as profit on
the capital he has advanced in paying for goods,
^lanila cigars cost, when bought of the importer in
San Francisco, $70 a thousand, of which $14 is the
cost of the cigars laid down in this port and $56 is
the customs duty. But the dealer who purchases these
Cigars to sell again must charge a profit, not on $14, the
416
APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY
Book VIII.
real cost of the cigars, but on 670, the cost of the cigars
plus the duty. In this way all taxes which add to prices
are shifted from hand to hand, increasing as they go,
until they ultimately rest upon consumers, who thus
pay- much more than is received by the government.
Now, the way taxes raise prices is by increasing the
cost of production, and cheeldng supply. But land is
not a thing of human production, and taxes upon rent
cannot check supply. Therefore, though a tax on rent ^
compels the land owners to pay more, it gives them no
power to obtain more for the use of their land, as it in
no way tends to reduce the supply of land. On the
contrary, by compelling those who hold land on specu-
lation to sell or let for what they can get, a tax on land
values tends to increase the competition between own-
ers, and thus to reduce the price of land.
Thus in all respects a tax upon land values is the
cheapest tax by which a large revenue can be raised —
giving to the government the largest net revenue in
proportion to the amount taken from the people.
III. — As to Certainty
Certainty is an important element in taxation, for
just as the collection of a tax depends upon the dili-
gence and faithfulness of the collectors and the public
spirit and honesty of those who are to pay it, will oppor-
tunities for tyranny, and corruption be opened on the
one side, and for evasions and frauds on the other.
The methods by which the bulk of our revenues are
collected are condemned on this ground, if on no other.
The gross corruptions and fraud occasioned in the
United States by the whisky and tobacco taxes are well
known; the constant undervaluations of the Custom
House, the ridiculous untruthfulness of income tax re-
turns, and the absolute impossibility of getting anything
Chap. HI.
THE CANONS OP TAXATION
417
like a just valuation of personal property, are matters
of notoriety. The material loss which such taxes inflict
—the item' of cost which this uncertainty adds to the
amount paid by the people but not received by the gov-
ernment— ^is very great. When, in the days of the pro-
tective system of England, her coasts were lined with'
an army of men endeavoring to prevent smuggling, and
another army of men were engaged in evading them, it
is evident that the maintenance of both armies had to.
come from the produce of labor and capital that the
expenses and profits of the smugglers, as well as the
pay and bribes of the Custom House officers, constituted
a, tax upon the industry of the nation, in addition to
"what was received by the government. And so, all
•douceurs to assessors; all bribes to customs officials; all'
moneys expended in electing pliable officers or in pro-
curing, acts or decisions which avoid taxation; all the
costly modes' of bringing in goods so as to evade duties,
and of manufacturing so as to evade imposts; all
nioieties, and expenses of detectives and spies; all ex-
penses of legal proceedings and punishments, not only
■to the government, but to those prosecuted, are so much
'W'hich these taxes take from the general fund of wealth,
"Without adding to the revenue.
Yet this is the least part of the cost. Taxes which
lack the element of certainty tell most fearfully upon
naorals. Our revenue laws as a body might well be
entitled, “Acts to promote -the corruption of public offi-
cials, to suppress honesty and encourage fraud, to set
a premium upon perjury and the subornation of per-
and to divorce the idea mf law from the idea of
lustice.” This is their true character, and they succeed
admirably. A Custom House oath is a by-word; our
assessors regularly swear to assess all property at its
^'}11, true, cash value, -and habitually do nothing of the
hi*id; men who pride themselves on their personal and
418
APPLICATION OF THE EEMEDY
Book vin.
commercial honor bribe officials and make false returns j
and the demoralizing spectacle is constantly presented of
the same court trying a murderer one day and a vendor
of unstamped matches the next!
So uncertain and so demoralizing are these modes of
taxation that the ISfew York Commission, composed of
David A, Wells, Edwin Dodge and George W. Cuyler,
who investigated the subject of taxation in that State,
proposed to substitute for most of the taxes now levied,
other than that on real estate, an arbitrary tax on each
individual, estimated on the rental value of the premises
he occupied.
But there is no necessity of resorting to anj' arbitrary
assessment. The tax on land values, which is the least
arbitrary of taxes, possesses in the highest degree the
element of certainty. It may be assessed and collected
with a definiteness that partakes of the immovable and
unconcealable character of the land itself. Taxes levied
on land may be collected to the last cent, and though
the assessment of land is now often unequal, yet the
assessment of personal property is far more unequal,
and these inequalities in the assessment of land largely
arise from the taxation of improvements with land, and
from the demoralization that, springing from the causes
to which I have referred, affects the whole scheme of
taxation. Were aU taxes placed upon land values, irre-
spective of improvements, the scheme of taxation would
be so simple and clear, and public attention would be
so directed to it, that the valuation of taxation could .
and would be made with the same certainty that a real
estate agent can determine the price a seller can get
for a lot.
IV. — As to Equality
Adam Smith’s canon is, that “The subjects of every
state ought to contribute toward the support of the gov-
Chap. 111.
THE CANONS OP TAXATION
419
ernment as nearly as possible in proportion to their
respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue
which they respectively enjoy under the protection of
the state.” Every tax, he goes on to say, which falls
only upon rent, or only upon wages,' or only upon inter-
est, is necessarily unequal. In accordance with this is
the common idea which our systems of taxing everything
vainly attempt to carry out — ^that every one should pay
taxes in proportion to his means, or in proportion to his
income.
But, waiving all the insuperable practical diflBculties
in the way of taxing every one according to his means,
it is evident that justice cannot be thus attained.
■ Here, for instance, are two men of equal means, or
equal incomes, one having a large family, the other
having no one to support but himself. Upon these two
luen indirect taxes fall very unequally, as the one cannot
avoid the taxes on the food, clothing, etc., consumed by
his family, while the other need pay only upon the neces-
saries consumed by himself. But, supposing taxes levied
directly, so that each pays the same amount. Still there
is injustice. The income of the one is charged with the
support of six, eight, or ten persons ; the income of the
other with that of but a single person. And unless
the Malthusian doctrine be carried to the extent of re-
garding the rearing of a new citizen as an injury to the,
state, here is a gross injustice.
But it may be said that this is a difficulty which
oannot be got- over; that it is Nature herself that brings
human beings helpless into the world and devolves
their support upon the parents, providing in compensa-
tion therefor her own sweet and great rewards. Very
Well, then, let us turn to Nature, and read the mandates
of justice in her law.
Nature gives to labor; and to labor alone. In a very
Harden of Eden a man would stance but for human
i20
APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY
Bock Vlll.
exertion. Now, here are two men of equal incomes —
that of the one derived from the exertion of his labor,
that of the other from 'the rent of land. Is if just that
they should equally contribute to the expenses of the
state? Evidently not. The income of the one. repre-
sents wealth he creates and adds to the general wealth
of the state; the income of the other represents merely
wealth that he takes from the general stock, returning
nothing. The right of the one to the enjoyment of his
income rests on the warrant of nature, which returns
wealth to labor; the right of the other to the enjoyment
of his income is a mere fictitious right, the creation of
municipal regulation, which is unknown and unrecog-
nized by nature. The father who is told that from his
labor he must support his' children must acquiesce, for
such is the natural decree; but he may justly demand
that from the income gained by his labor not one penny
shall be taken, so long as a penny remains of incomes
which are gained by a monopoly of the natural oppor-
tunities which Natm'e offers impartially to all, and in
which his children have as their birthright an equal
share.
Adam Smith speaks of incomes as “enjoyed under the
protection of the state;'" and this is the ground upon
which the equal taxation of all species of property is '
commonly insisted upon— that it is equally protected ,
by the state. The basis of this idea is evidently that '
the enjoyment of property is made possible by the
state — ^that there is a value* created and maintained by
the .community, which, is justly called upon to meet
community expenses. Now, of what values is this true?
Only of the value of land. This is a value that does
not arise until a community is formed, and that, unlike
other values, grows with the growth of the community.
It exists only as the community exists. Scatter again
the largest community, and land, now so valuable, would
Chap. in.
THE CANONS OP TAXATION
421
have no value at all. With every increase of popula-
tion the value of land rises; with every decrease it falls.
This is true of nothing else save of things which, like
the ovuiership of land, are in their nature monopolies.
The tax upon land values is, therefore, the most just
and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who
receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit,
and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive.
It is the taking by the community, for the use of the
community, of that value which is the creation of the
community. It is the application of the common prop-
erty to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxa-
tion for the needs of the community, then will the
equality ordained by nature be attained. No citizen
yill have an advantage over anj'' other citizen save as
given by his industry, skill, and intelligence ; and each
^ill obtain what he fairly earns. Then, but not till
then, will labor get its full reward, and capital its nat-
ural return. ■
CHAPTER IV
INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS
^ The grounds from which we have drawn the conclu-
sion that the tax on land values or rent is the best
method of raising public revenues have been admitted
expressly or tacitly by all economists of standing, since
the determination of the nature and law of rent.
Ricardo says (Chap, X), “a. tax on rent would fall
wholly on landlords, and could not be shifted to any
class of consumers,” for it “would leave unaltered the
difference between the produce obtained from the least
productive land in cultivation and that obtained from
land of every other quality. * * * A tax on rent would
not discourage the cultivation of fresh land, for such
land pays no rent and would be untaxed.”
McCulloch (Note XXIV to "Wealth of Nations”)
declares that "in a practical point of view taxes on the
rent of. land are among the most unjust and impolitic
that can be imagined,” but he makes this assertion
solely on the ground of his assumption that it is prac-
tically impossible to distinguish in taxation between
the sum paid for the use of the soil and that paid on
account of the . capital expended upon it. But, sup-
posing that this separation could be effected, he admits
that the sum paid to landlords for the use of the natural
powers of the soil might be entirely swept away by a
tax without their having it in their power to throw any
portion of the burden upon any one else, and without
affecting the price of produce,
422
ifiap. IV.
INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS
423
John Stuart Mill not only admits all this, but expressly
declares the expediency and justice of a peculiar tax on
rent, ai^king what right the landlords have to the acces-
sion of riches that comes to them from the general
progress of society without work, risk, or economizing
on their part, and although he expressly disapproves
of interfering with their claim to the present value of
land, he proposes to take the whole future increase as
belonging to society by natural right.
Mrs. Fawcett, in the little compendium of the writings
of her husband, entitled ‘'Political Economy for Begin-
pors,” says: “The land tax, whether small or great
m amount, partakes of the nature of a rent paid by the
owner of land to the state. In a great part of India the
land is owned by the government and therefore the land
l^ax is rent paid direct to the state. The economic
perfection of this system of tenure may be readily
perceived.”
la fact, that rent should, both on grounds of expedi-
ency and justice, be the peculiar subject of taxation, is
involved in the accepted doctrine of rent, and may be
^ound in embryo in the works of all economists who
have accepted the law of Ricardo. That these prin-
ciples have not been pushed to their necessary conclu-
sions, as I have pushed them, evidently arises from the
indisposition to endanger or offend the enormous inter-
est involved in private ownership in land, and from
we false theories in regard to wages and the cause of
poverty which have dominated economic thought.
^ut there has been a school of economists who plainly
- perceived, what is clear to the natural perceptions of
Wen vdien uninfluenced by habit — ^that the revenues of
he common property, land, ought to be appropriated
w the common service. The French Economists of the
_sst century, headed by Quesnay and Turgot, proposed
lust what I have proposed, that all taxation should be
m
APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY
Book VIII
abolished save a tax upon the value of land. As I am
acquainted with the doctrines of Quesnay and his dis-
ciples only at second hand through the medium of the
IDnglish writers, I am unable to saj'' how far his peculiar,
ideas as to agriculture being the only productive avo-
cation, etc., are erroneous apprehensions, or mere pe-
culiarities of terminology. But of this I am certain
irom the proposition in which his theory culminated — ■
that he saw the fundamental relation between land and
labor wdiich has since been lost sight of, and that he
arrived at practical truth, though, it may be, through
a course of defectively expressed reasoning. The causes
which leave in the hands of the landlord a "produce
net’^ were by the Physiocrats no better -explained than
the suction of a pump was explained by the assumption
that nature abhors a vacuum, but the fact in its prac-
tical relations to social economy was recognized, and
the benefit w'hich would result from. the perfect free-
dom given to industry and trade by a substitution of a
tax on rent for all the impositions which hamper and
distort the application of labor was doubtless, as clearly
seen by them as it is by me. One of the things most to
be regretted about the French Revolution is that it
overwhelmed the ideas of the Economists, just as they
were gaining strength among the thinking classes, and
were apparently about to influence fiscal legislation.
Without knowing anything of Quesnay or his doc-
trines, I have reached the same practical conclusion by
a route which cannot be disputed, and have based it on
grounds which cannot be questioned by the accepted
political economy.
The only objection to the tax on rent or land values
which is to be met - with in standard politico-economic ’
works ia one which concedes its advantages — for it is,
that from the difficulty of separation, we might, in tax- . ,
jng the rent of land, tax something else. McCulloch,
Chap- IV. INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS 425
lOr instance, declares taxes on the rent of land to be
impolitic and unjust because the return received for the
natural and inherent powers of the soil cannot be clearly
distinguished from the return received from improve-
ments and meliorations, which might thus be discour-
aged. Macaulay somewhere says that if the admission
of the attraction of gravitation were inimical to any
considerable pecuniary interest, there would not be
Wanting arguments against gravitation a truth ^ of
Miich this objection is an illustration. For admitting
that it is impossible invariably to separate the value
of land from the value of improvements, is this neces-
sity of continuing to tax some improvements any reason
yhy we should continue to tax all improvements? If
It discourage production to tax values which labor and
capital have intimately combined with that of land, how
oiuch greater discouragement is involved in taxing not
oaly these; but 'all the clearly distinguishable values
^hich labor and capital create?
but, as a matter of fact, the value of land can always
he readily distinguished from the value of improvements,
la countries like the United States there is much valu-
able land that has never been improved; and in many
of the States the value of the land and -the value of im-
provements are habitually estimated separately by the
assessors, though afterward reunited under the term
ycal- estate. Nor where ground has been occupied from
iromemorial times, is there any difficulty in getting at
the value of the bare land, for frequently the land is
owned by one person and the buildings by another, and
^hen a. fire occurs and improvements are destroyed,
, a clear , and definite value remains in the land. In the
oldest.. country in the world no difficulty whatever can
attend the separation, if all that be attempted is to.
separate the value of the clearly distinguishable im-
provements, made within a moderate period, from th|
426
application of the remedy
Boole YIJl
yaluG of the land, should they be destroyed. This,
manifestly, is all that justice or policy requires. Abso-
lute accuracy is impossible in any systerh, and to at-
tempt to separate all that the human race has done
from what nature originally provided would be as ab-
surd as impracticable. A swamp drained or a hill tec--
raced by the Romans constitutes now as much a part
of the natural advantages of the British Isles as though
the work had been done by earthquake or glacier. The
fact that after a certain lapse of time the value of such
permanent improvements would be considered as hav-
ing lapsed into that of the land, and would be taxed
accordingly, could have no deterrent effect on such
improvements, for such works are frequently under-
taken upon leases for years. The fact is, that each
generation builds and improves for itself, and not for
the remote future. And the further fact is, that each
generation is heir, not only to the natural powers of the
earth, but to all that remains of the work of past gen-
erations.
An objection of a different kind may however be
made. It may be said that where political power is dif-
fused, it is highly desirable that taxation should fall
not on one class, such as land owners, but on all; in
order that all who exercise political power may feel a
proper interest in economical government. Taxation
and representation, it will be said, cannot safely be di-
vorced.
But however desirable it may be to combine with
political .power the consciousness of public burdens, the
present system certainly does not secure it. Indirect,
taxes are largely raised from those who pay little or
nothing consciously. In the United States the class is
rapidly growing who not only feel no interest in taxa-
tion, but who have no concern in good government. In
our large cities elections are in great measm-e deter-
Chap. IV. INDOESEMBNTS AND OBJECTIONS 427
mined not by considerations of public interest, but by
such influences as determined elections in Rome when
the masses had ceased to care for anything but bread
and the circus.
The effect of substituting for the manifold taxes now
imposed a single tax on the value of land would hardly
lessen the number of conscious taxpayers, for the divi-
sion of land now held on speculation would much in-
crease the number of land holders. But it would so
equalize the distribution of wealth as to raise even the
poorest above that condition of abject poverty in which
public considerations have no weight; while it would at
the same time cut down those overgrown fortunes which
raise their possessors above concern in government. The
dangerous classes politically are the very rich and very
poor. It is not the taxes that he is conscious of paying
that gives a man a stake in the country, an interest in
its government; it is the consciousness of feeling that
he is an integral part of the community; that its pros-
perity is his prosperity, and its disgrace his shame. Let
hut the citizen feel this; let. him be surrounded by all
i^he influences that spring from and cluster round a com-
fortable home, and the community may rely upon him,
even to limb or to life. Men do not vote patriotically,
more than they fight patriotically, because of their
payment of taxes. Whatever conduces to the comfort-
able and independent material condition of the masses
^ill best foster public spirit, will make the ultimate gov-
erning power more intelligent and more virtuous.
S'Ut it may be asked: If the tax on land values is
eo advantageous a mode of raising revenue, how is it
that so many other taxes are resorted to in preference
by all governments?’
The answer is obvious: The tax on land values is
the only tax of any importance that does not distribute
itself. It falls upon the owners of land, and there is
428
APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY
Booh vm
no way in which they can shift the burden upon any one
else. Hence, a large and powerful class are directly in-
terested in keeping do\vn the tax on land values and
substituting, as a means for raising the required reve-
nue, taxes on other things, just as the land owners of
England, two hundred years ago, succeeded in establish-
ing an excise, which fell on all consumers, for the dues
under the feudal tenures, which fell only on them.
There is, thus, a definite and powerful interest op-
posed to the taxation of land values; but to the, other
taxes upon which modern governments so largely, rely
there is no special opposition. The ingenuity of states-
men has been exercised in devising schemes of taxation
which drain the wages of labor and the earnings of capi-
tal as the vampire bat is said to suck , the lifeblood of
its victim. Nearly all of these taxes are ultimately paid
by that indefinable being, the consumer; and he pays
them in a way which does not call his attention to the
fact that he is paying a tax — ^pays them in such small
amounts and in such insidious modes that he does not
notice it, and is not likely to take the trouble to remon-
strate effectually. Those who pay the money directly to
the tax • collector are not' only not interested in oppos-
ing a tax which they so easily shift from their own
shoulders, but are very frequently interested in its im-
position and maintenance, as are other powerful in-
terests which profit, or expect to profit, by the increase
of prices which such taxes .bring about.
Nearly all of the manifold taxes- by which the people
of the United States are now burdened have been im-
posed rather with a View to private advantage than to
the raising of revenue, and the great obstacle to the
simplification of taxation is these private interests,
whose representatives cluster in the lobby whenever a
reduction of taxation, is proposed, to see that. the taxes
by which they profit are not reduced. The fastening of
Chap- IV. INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS 42'^
a protective tariff upon the United States has been due
to these influences, and not to the acceptance of absurd
theories of protection upon their own merits. The large
revenue which the civil war rendered necessary was the
golden opportunity of these special interests, and taxes
were piled up oh every possible thing, not so much to
raise revenue as to enable particular classes to partici-
pate in the advantages of tax-gathering and tax-pocket-
ing. And, since the war, these interested parties have
constituted the great obstacle to the reduction of taxa-
tion; those taxes which cost the people least having,
for this reason, been found easier to abolish than those
taxes which cost the people most. And, thus, even
popular governments, which have for their avowed prin-
ciple the securing of the greatest good to the greatest
number, are, in a most important function, used to
secure a questionable good to a small number, at the
expense of a great evil to the many.
License taxes are generally favored by those on whom
fhey are imposed, as they tend to keep others from en-
tering the business; imposts upon manufactures are
frequently grateful to large manufacturers for similar
reasons, as was seen in the opposition of the distillers
to the reduction of the whisky tax; duties on imports
not only tend to give certain producers special advan-
tages, but accrue to the benefit of importers oi dealers
who have large stocks on hand; and so, in the case of all
«uch taxes, there are particular interests, capable of
ready organization and concerted action, which favor
the imposition of the tax, while, in the case of a tax
npon the value of land, there is a solid and sensitive in.^
tcrest steadily and bitterly to oppose it.
But if once the truth which I am trying to make deal*
understood by the masses, it is easy to see how a
nnion of political forces strong enough to carry it into
practice becomes possible.
BOOK IX
EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY
chapter I.— op the effect upon the production of
WEALTH
Chapter n.— op the effect upon distribution and thence
UPON PRODUCTION
, chapter m.— of the effect upon individuals and classes
'HAPTER rv.— of the changes that would be wrought in
SOCIAL organization AND SOCIAL LIFE
I cannot play upon any stringed instrument; but I can tell
you how of a little village to make a great and glorious. city.—
Themistocles.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the nr tree, and instead
of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree.
And they shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall
plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build
and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat.—
Isaiah.
CHAPTER I
OF THE EFFECT UPON THE PRODUCTION OP WEALTH
The elder Mirabeau, we are told, ranked the proposi-
tion of Quesnay, to substitute one single tax on rent
(the impot unique) for all other taxes, as a discovery
equal in utility to the invention of writing or the sub^
stitution of the use of money for barter.
To whomsoever will think over the matter, this say-
ing will appear an evidence of penetration rather than
of extravagance. The advantages which would be
gained by substituting for the numerous taxes by which
the public revenues are now raised, a single tax levied
upon the value of land, will appear more and more im-
portant the more they are considered. This is the secret
^hich would transform the little village into the great
pity. With all the burdens removed which_ now oppress
industry and hamper exchange, the production of wealth
yould go on with a rapidity now undreamed of. This,
iu its turn, would lead to an increase in the value of land
■~-a new surplus which society might take for general
purposes. And released from the difficulties which at-
tend the collection of revenue in a way that begets
porruption and renders legislation the tool of special
interests, society could assume functions which the in-
creasing complexity of life makes it desirable to assume,
hut which the prospect of political demoralization under
the present system now leads thoughtful men to shrink
from.
Consider the effect upon the production of wealth.
433
434
EFFECTS OP THE REMEDT
Book IX. '
To abolish the taxation which, acting and reacting,
now hampers every wheel of exchange and presses upon
every form of industiy, w’ould be like removing an im-
mense weight from a powerful spring. Imbued with
fresh energy, production would start into new life, and.
trade would receive a stimulus which would be felt to
the remotest arteries. The present method of taxation
operates upon exchange like artificial deserts a'nd moun-
tains; it costs more to get goods through a custom house
than it does to carry them around the world. It oper-.
ates upon energy, and industry, and skill, and thrift,
like a fine upon those qualities. If I have worked
harder and built myself a good house while you have
been contented to live in a , hovel, the tax-gatherer now
comes annually to make me pay a penalty for my energy
and industry, by taxing me more than you. If I have
saved while you wasted, I am mulct, awhile you are
‘ exempt. If a man build a ship we make Pirn pay for his
temerity, as though he had done an injury to the state;
if a railroad be opened, down comes the tax-collector
upon it, as though it were a public nuisance; if a manu-
factory be erected w'-e levy upon it an annual sum which
would go far tow'ard making a handsome profit. We
say we want capital, but if any one accumulate it, or
bring it among us, we charge him for it as though we
were giving him a pri^dlege. We punish with a tax the
man who covers barren fields with ripening grain, we
fine him who puts up machinery, and him who drains a
swamp. How heavily these taxes burden production
only those realize who have attempted to follow our
system of taxation through its ramifications, for, as I
have before said, the heaviest part of taxation is that
which falls in increased- prices. But manifestly these
taxes are in their nature akin to the Egyptian Pasha’s
tax upon date-trees. If they do not cause the trees to
.be cut down, they at least discourage the planting. ,
Cftop. 1. trPON THE PBODUCTION OP WEALTH . 435
To.alDolish these taxes would be to lift - the whole
enormous w^eight of tax{j,tioii from productive industry.
The needle of the seamstress and the great manufac-
tory; the cart-horse and the locomotive; the fishing boat
and the steamship ; the farmer’s plow and the merchant’s
stock, would be alike untaxed. All would be free to
make or to save, to buy or to sell, unfined by taxes, un-
annoyed by the tax-gatherer. Instead of saying to the
producer, as it does now, “The more you add to the
general wealth the more shall you be taxed!” the state
^’ould say to the producer, “Be as industrious, as thrifty,
as enterprising as you choose, you shall have your full
reward! You shall not be fined for making two blades
of grass grow where one grew before; you shall not be
taxed- for adding to the aggregate wealth,”
And will not the community gain by thus refusing
to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs; by thus re-
fraining from muzzling the ox that treadeth out the
corn; by thus leaving to industry, and thrift, and skill,
their natural rewmrd, full and unimpaired? For there is
to the community also a natural reward. The law of
society is, each for all, as well as all for each. No one
oan keep to himself the good he may do, any more than
he can keep the bad. Every productive enterprise, be-
sides its return to those who undertake it, yields collat-
eral advantages to. others. If a man plant a fruit-tree,
his gain is that he gathers the fruit in its time and sea-
son. But in addition to his gain, there is a gain to the
^’hole community. Others than the owmer are bene-
fited by the increased supply of fruit; the birds which
It shelters fly far and wude; the rain which it helps to
attract falls not alone on his field; and, even to the
®ye which rests upon it from a distance, it brings a
sense of beauty. And so with everj’thing else. The
building of a house, a factorj’-, a ship, or a railroad, bene-
fits others besides those w’ho get the direct profits. Na-
436
EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY
Booh IX.
ture laughs at a miser. He is like the squirrel who buries
his Duts and refrains from digging them up again. Lol
they sprout and grow into trees. In fine linen, steeped
in costly spices, the mummy is laid away. Thousands
and thousands of years thereafter, the Bedouin cooks his
food by a fire of its encasings, it generates the steam
by which the traveler is whirled on his way, or it passes
into far-off lands to gratify the curiosity of another race.
The bee fills the hollow tree with honey, and along
comes the bear or the man.
Well may the community leave to the individual pro-
ducer all that prompts him to exertion; well may it
let the laborer have the full reward of his labor,
and the capitalist the full return of his capital. Tor
the more that labor and capital produce, the greater
grows the common wealth in which all may share. And
in the value or rent of land is this general gain ex-
pressed in a definite and concrete form. Here is a fund
which the state may take while leaving to labor and
capital their full reward. With increased activity of
production this would commensurately increase.
And to shift the burden of taxation from production
and exchange to the value or rent of land would not
merely be to give new stimulus to the production of
wealth; it would be to open new opportunities. For
under this system no one would care to hold land unless
to use it, and land now withheld from use would every-
where be thrown open to improvement.
The selling price of land would fall; land speculation
Would receive its death blow; land monopolization would
no longer pay. Millions and millions of acres from
which settlers are now shut out by high prices would be
abandoned by their present owners or sold to settlers
upon nominal terms. And this not merely on the
frontiers, but within what are now considered well set-
tled districts. Within a hundred miles of San Francisco
Chap. J. UPON THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH 437
^'ould be thus thrown open land enough to support, even
^th present modes of cultivation, an agricultural popu-
lation equal to that now scattered from the Oregon
boundary to the Mexican line — a distance of 800 miles.
^ the same degree would this be true of most of the
Western States, and in a great degree of the older East-
ern States, for e^^en in New York and Pennsylvania is
population yet sparse as compared with the capacity of
the land. And even in densely populated England would
such a policy throw open to cultivation many hundreds
of thousands of acres now held as private parks, deei‘
preserves, and shooting grounds.
'■ For this simple device of placing all taxes on the value
of land would be in effect putting up the land at auction
^ whomsoever would pay the highest rent to the state.
The demand for land fixes its value, and hence, if taxes
^ore placed so as very nearly to consume that value,
the man who' wished to hold land without using it would
have to pay very nearly what it would be worth to any
one who wanted to use it.
' And it must be remembered that this would apply, not
^erely to agricultural land, but to all land. Mineral
jond Would be thrown open to use, just as agricultural
|ond;-and in the heart of a city no one could afford to
^opp land from its most profitable use, or on the out-
®hirts to demand more for it than the use to which it
oould at the time be put wmuld .warrant. Everywhere
land had attained a value, taxation, instead of oper-
as now, as a fine upon improvement, would operate
0 force improvement. Whoever planted an orchard, or
®o^ed a field, or built a house, or erected a manufac-
.°^yi no matter how costly, would have no more to pay
^n taxes than if he kept so much land idle. The mo-
nopolist of agricultural land would be taxed as much as ■
oough his land were covered with houses and barns,
' crops and with stock. The owner of a vacant city
438
EFFECTS OF THE EEMEDY
Book IX,
lot would have to pay as much for the privilege of keep-
ing other people off of it until he wanted to use it, as
his neighbor w'ho has a fine house upon his lot. It would
cost as much to keep a row of tumble-down shanties
upon valuable land as though it were covered, with a
grand hotel or a pile of great warehouses filled with
costly goods.
Thus, the bonus that wherever labor is most produc-
tive must now be paid before labor can be exerted would
disappear. The farmer would not have to pay out half
his means, or mortgage his labor for years, in order to
obtain land to cultivate; the builder of a city home-'
stead would not have to lay out as much for a small
lot as for the house he puts upon it; the company that
proposed to erect a manufactory would not have to ex-
pend a great part of their capital for a site. And what
would be paid from year to year to the state would be
in lieu of all the taxes now levied upon improvements,
machinery, and stock.
Consider the effect of such a change npon the labor
market. Competition would no longer be one-sided, as
now. Instead of laborers competing with each- other for
omployment, and in their competition' cutting down
wages to the point of bare subsistence, employers would
everywhere be competing for laborers, and wages would
rise to the fair earnings of labor. For into" the labor
market would have entered the greatest of all competi-
tors for the employment of labor, a competitor whose
demand cannot be satisfied until want is satisfied — the
demand of labor itself. The employers of labor would
not have merely to bid against other employers, all feel-
ing the stimulus of greater trade and increased profits,
but against the ability of laborers to become their own
employers upon the natural opportunities freely opened
to them by the tax which prevented monopolization. _
With natural opportunities thus free to labor; wifi
Cftop. 1. UPON THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH , 439
capital and improvements exempt from tax, and ex-
change released from restrictions, the spectacle of will-
ing men unable to turn their labor into the things they
are suffering for would become impossible; the recurring
paroxysms which paralyze industry would cease; every
■wheel of production would be set in motion; demand
■would keep pace with supply, and supply with demand;
trade would increase in every direction, and wealth aug-
naeut on every hand.
CHAPTER II
OF THH EFFECT ITPON DISTBIBETION AND THENCE UPON
PRODUCTION
But great as they thus appear, the advantages of a
transference of all public burdens to a tax upon the
value of land cannot be fully appreciated until we con-
sider the effect upon the distribution of wealth.
Tracing out the cause of the unequal distribution of
wealth which appears in all civiliised countries, with a
constant tendency to greater and greater inequality as
material progfess goes on, we have found it in the fact
that, as civilization advances, the ownership of land,
now in private hands, gives a greater and greater power
of appropriating the wealth produced, by labor and
capital.
Thus, to relieve labor and capital from all taxation,
direct and indirect, and to throw the burden upon rent,
would be, as far as it went, to counteract this tendency
to inequality, and, if it went so far as to take in taxa-
tion the whole of rent, the cause of inequality would be
totally destroyed. Rent, instead of causing inequality,
as now, would then promote equality. Labor and capi-
tal would then receive the whole produce, minus that
portion taken by the state in the taxation of land values,
which, being applied to public purposes, would, be
equally distributed in public benefits.
That is to say, the wealth produced in every com-
munity would be divided into two portions. One part
would be, distributed in wages and interest between in-
440
i/. UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 441
^^idual producers, according to the part each had taken
m the work of production; the other part would go to
the community as a whole, to be distributed in public
benefits to all its members. In this all would share
equally — ^the weak with the strong, young children and
decrepit old men, the maimed, the halt, and the blind,
ss well as the vigorous. And justly so — for while one
part represents the result of individual effort in pro-
duction, the other represents the increased power with
■which the community as a whole aids the individual.
Thus, as material progress tends to increase rent, were
rent taken by the community for common purposes the
''ery cause which now tends to produce inequality as
Material progress goes on would then tend to produce
greater and greater equality. Fully to understand this
effect, let us revert to principles previously worked out.
We have seen that wages and interest must every-
'vhere be fixed by the rent line or margin of cultivation
““•that is to say, by the reward which labor and capital
aan secure on land for which no rent is paid; that the
aggregate amount of wealth, which the aggregate of
aPor and capital ' employed in production will receive.
Will be the amount of wealth produced (or rather, when
We consider taxes, the net amount) , minus what is taken
as rent.
We have seen that with material progress, as it is at '
present going on,- there is a twofold tendency to the ad-
vance of rent^ Both are to the increase of the propor-
jon of the wealth produced which goes as rent, and to
ue decrease of the proportion which goes as wages and
interest. But the first, or natural tendency, which re-
'iffs from the laws of social development, is to the in-
^i^ease of rent as a quantity, without the reduction of
Wages and interest as quantities, or even with their
quantitative increase. The other tendency, which re-
Pits from the unnatural appropriation of land to pri-
442
EFFECTS OP THE BEMEDY
Booh IX-
rate ownership, is to the increase of rent as a quantity
by the reduction of w^ages and interest as quantities.
Now, it is evident that to take rent in taxation for
public purposes, which virtually abolishes private own-
ership in land, w'^ould be to destroy the tendency to an
absolute decrease in wages and interest, by destroying
the speculative monopolization of land and the specula-
tive increase in rent. It would be very largely to in-
crease wages and interest, by throwing open natural
opportunities now monopolized and reducing the price
of land. Labor and capital wmuld thus not merely gain
what is now taken from them in taxation, but would
gain by the positive decline in rent caused by the de-
crease in speculative land values. A new equilibrium
would be established, at wdiieh the common rate of wages
and interest would be much higher than now.
But • this new equilibrium established, further ad- ■
vances in productive power, and the tendency in this
direction would be greatly accelerated, would result in .
still increasing rent, not at the expense of wmges and in-
terest, but by new gains in production, -which, as rem
would be taken by the community for public uses,
would accrue to the advantage of every member of the
community. Thus, as material progress went on, the
condition of the masses would constantly improve. Not
merely one class -s^muld become richer, but all would be-
come richer; not merely one class would have more of <
the necessaries, conveniences, and elegancies of life, but
all would have more. For, the increasing power of pro-
duction, which comes with increasing population, with
every new discovery in the productive arts, with every
labor-saving invention, with every extension and facili- ^
tation of exchanges, could be monopolized by none.
That part of the benefit which did not go directly to
increase the reward of labor and capital would go to .
the state— that is to say, to the whole community. With
^P- n. UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 443
all the enormous advantages, material and mental, of a
dense population, would be united the freedom and
equality that can now be found only in new and sparsely
settled districts.
And, then, consider how equalization in the distribu-
tion of wealth would react upon production, everywhere
preventing waste, everywhere increasing power.
If it were possible to express in figures the direct
pecuniarjf loss vdiich society suffers from the social mal-
adjustments which condemn large classes to poverty and
''dee, the estimate would be appalling. England main-
tains over a million paupers on official charity; the city,
of New York alone spends over seven million dollars
^ year in a similar way. But what is spent from public
funds, what is spent by charitable societies and what is
spent in individual charity, would, if aggregated, -be but
the first and smallest item in the account. The poten-
tial earnings of the labor thus going to waste, the cost
of, the reckless, improvident and idle habits thus gen-
orated; the pecuniary loss, to consider nothing more,
suggested by the appalling statistics of mortality, and
ospecially infant mortality, among the poorer classes;
the Waste indicated by the gin palaces or low groggefies
'^"hich increase as poverty deepens; the damage done by
the vermin of society that are bred of poverty and des-
titution— ^the thieves, prostitutes, beggars, and tramps;
the cost of guarding society against them, are all items
in the sum which the present unjust and unequal dis-
tribution of wealth takes from the aggregate which, with
present means of production, society might enjoy. Nor
yet shall we have completed the account. The ignorance
und vice, the recklessness and immorality engendered by
‘-he inequality in' the distribution of wealth show them-
selves in the imbecility and corruption of government;
und the waste of public revenues, and the still ' greater
I'^nste involved in the ignorant and corrupt abuse of pub-
444
Booh IX.
EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY
lie powers and functions, are .their legitimate conse-
quences.
But the increase in wages, and the opening of new
avenues of employment which would result from the
appropriation of rent to public purposes, would not
merely stop these wastes and relieve society of these
enormous losses; new power would be added to labor.
It is but a truism that labor is most productive where its
wages are largest. Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor,
the world over.
What is remarked between the efficiency of labor in
the agricultural districts of England where different
Tates of wages prevail ; what Brassey noticed as between
the work done by his better paid English navvies and
that done by the worse paid labor of the continent; what
was evident in the United States as between slave labor
and free labor; what is seen by the astonishing number
of mechanics or servants required in India or China to
get anything done, is universally true. The efficiency
of labor always, increases with the habitual wages of
labor — for high wages mean increased self-respect^ in-
telligence, hope, and energy. Man is not a machine, that
will do so much and no more; he is not an animal, whose
powers may reach thus far and no further. It is mind,
not muscle, which is the great agent of production. The
physical power evolved in the human frarne is one of
the weakest of forces, but for the human intelligence the
resistless currents of nature flow, and matter becomes
plastic to the human will. To increase the comforts,
and leisure, and independence of the masses is to in-
crease their intelligence; it is to bring the brain to the
aid of the hand; it is- to engage in the common work of
life the faculty which measures the animalcule and
traces the orbits of the stars!
Who can say to what infinite powers the wealth-pro-
ducing capacity of labor may not be, raised by social
Chap. II.
UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OP WEALTH
445
adjustments which will give to the producers of wealth
their fair proportion of its advantages and enjoyments I
With present processes the gain would be simply in-
calculable, but just as wages are high, so do the inven-
tion and utilization of improved processes and machinery
go on with greater rapidity and ease. That the
wheat crops of Southern Russia are still reaped with
the scythe and beaten out with the flail is simply be-
cause wages are there so low. American invention,
American aptitude for labor-saving processes and ma-
chinery are the result of the comparatively high wages
that have prevailed in the United States. Had our pro-
ducers been condemned to the low reward of the Egyp-
tian fellah or Chinese coolie, we would be drawing water
by hand and transporting goods on the shoulders of
men. The increase in the reward of labor and capital
would still further stimulate invention and hasten the
adoption of improved processes, and these would truly
appear, what in themselves they really are— an unmixed
good. The injurious effects of labor-saving machinery
Upon the working classes, that are now so often appar-
ent, and that, in spite of all argument, make so many
people regard machinery as an evil instead of a blessing,
Would disappear. Every new power engaged in the serv-
ice of man would improve the condition of all. And
froih the general intelligence and mental activity spring-
ing from- this general improvement of condition would
come new developments of power of which we as yet
cannot dream.
But I shall not deny, and do not wish to lose sight of
the fact, that while thus preventing waste and thus add-
ing to the efficiency of labor, the equalization in the
distribution of wealth that would result from the simple
. plan of taxation that I propose, must lessen the in-
tensity with which wealth is pursued. It seems to me
that in a condition of society in which no one need fear
446
EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY
Book IX,
poverty, no one would desire great wealth — at least, no
one would take the trouble to strive and to strain for it
as men do now. For, certainly, the spectacle of men who
have only a few years to live, slaving awa}^ their time
for the sake of dying rich, is in itself so unnatural and
absurd, that in a state of society where the abolition of
the fear of want had dissipated the envious adpoiration
with which the masses of men now regard the possession
of great riches, whoever would toil to acquire more than
he cared to use would be looked upon as we would now
look on a man who would thatch his head with half a
dozen hats, or walk around in the hot sun vdth an over-
coat on, Wlien every one is sure of being able to get
enough, no one will care to make a pack-horse of him-
self.
And though this incentive to production be with-
drawn, can we not spare it? Whatever may have been
its office in an earlier stage of development, it is not
needed now. The dangers that menace our civilization
do not come from the weakness of the springs of produc-
tion. What it suffers from, and what, if a remedy be
not applied, it must die from, is unequal distribution!
Nor would the removal of this incentive, regarded
only from the standpoint of production, be an unmixed
loss. For, that the aggi’egate of production is greatly
reduced by the greed with which riches are pursued, is
one of the most obtrusive facts of modern society.
While, were this insane desire to get rich at any cost
lessened, mental activities now, devoted to scraping to-
gether riches would be translated into far higher spheres
of usefulness.
CHAPTER III
«
OF THE EFFECT UPON INDIVIDUALS A.ND CLASSES
ifc is first proposed lo put all taxes upon the
■^alue of land, and thus confiscate rent, all land holders
are likely to take the alann, and there will not be want-
ing appeals to the fears of small farm and homestead
owners, who will be told that this is a proposition to rob
^hem of their hard-earned property. But a moment’s
reflection will show that this proposition should com-
Kiend itself to all whose interests as land holders do not
largely exceed their interests as laborers or capitalists,
or both. And further consideration wull show that
though the large land holders may lose relatively, yet
6Ven in their case there null be an absolute gain. For,
the increase in production wall be so great that labor and
capital will gain ’very much more than will be lost to
private land ownership, wdiile in these gains, and in the
pcater ones involved in a more healthy social condition,
the whole community, including the land owners them-
selves, will share. .
In a preceding chapter I have gone over the question ■
of what is due to the present land holders, and have
shown that they have no claim to compensation. But
there is still another ground on which we may dismiss all
idea of compensation. They will not really be injured.
Tt is manifest, of course, that the change I- propose
Will- greatly benefit all those who live by wages, whether
of hand or of head — laborers, operatives, mechanics,
clerks, professional men of all sorts. It is -.manifest,
447
i48
EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY
Booh IX
also, that it will benefit all those who live partly by
wages and partly by the earnings of their capital-
storekeepers, merchants, manufacturers, employing oi
undertaking producers and exchangers of all . sorts—
from the peddler or drayman to the railroad or steam-
' ship owner— and it is likewise manifest that it will in-
crease the incomes of those whose incomes are drawn
from the earnings of capital, or from investments other
than in lands, save perhaps the holders of government
bonds or other securities bearing fixed rates of inter-
est, which will probably depreciate in selling value,
-owing to the rise in the general rate of interest, though
the income from them -will remain the same.
Take, now, the case of the homestead owner — ^the
mechanic, storekeeper, or professional man who has se-
cured himself a house and lot, where he lives, and which
he contemplates with satisfaction as a place from which
his family cannot be ejected in case of his death. He
will not be injured; on the contrary, he will be the
gainer. The selling value of his lot will diminish — ■
theoretically it will entirely disappear. But its useful-
ness to him will not disappear. It will serve his purpose
as well as ever. While, as the value of all other lots
will diminish or disappear in the same ratio, he retains
the same security of always having a lot that he had
before. That is to say, he is a loser only as the man .
who has bought himself a pair of boots may be said to
be a loser by a subsequent fall in the price of boots.
His boots will be just as useful to him, and the next
pair of boots he can get cheaper. So, to the homestead
owner, his lot will be as useful, and should he look
forward to getting a larger lot, or having his children,
as they grow up, get homesteads of their own, he will,
even in the matter of lots, be the gainer. And in the
present, other things considered, he will be much the
gainer. For though he will have more taxes to pay
Chap, III.
TTPOX INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES
449
upon his land, he will be released from taxes upon his
house and improvements, upon his furniture and per-
sonal property, upon all that he and his family eat,
drink and wear, while his earnings will be largely in-
creased by the rise of wages, the constant employment,
and the increased briskness of trade. His only loss will
be, if he wants to sell his lot without getting another, and
this will be a small loss compared with the great gain.
And so with the farmer. I speak not now of the
farmers who never touch the handles of a plow, who cul-
tivate thousands of acres and enjoy incomes like those
of the rich Southern planters before the war; but of the
Working farmers who constitute such a large class in
the United States— men who own small farms, which
they cultivate wdth the aid of their boys, and perhaps
some hired help, and who in Europe would be called
peasant proprietors. Paradoxical as it may appear to
these men until they understand the full bearings of the
proposition, of all classes above that of the mere laborer
they have most to gain by placing all taxes upon the
value of land. That they do not now get as good a liv-
ing as their hard work ought to give them, they generally
tcel, though they may not be able to trace the cause.
The fact is that taxation, as now levied, falls on them
yith peculiar severity. They are taxed on all their
improvements — ^liouses, bams, fences, crops, stock. The
personal property which they have cannot be as readily
concealed or undervalued- as can the more valuable kinds
which are concentrated in the cities. They are not only
taxed on personal property and improvements, which
the owners of unused land escape, but their land is gen-
erally taxed at a higher rate than land held on specula-
tion, simply because it is improved. But further than
i^his, all taxes imposed -.on commodities, and especially
the taxes which, like our protective duties, are imposed
with a view of* raising the prices of commodities, fall
450
EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY
Booh iX
on tne farmer without mitigation. Por in a country
like the United States, which exports agricultural prod-
uce, the farmer cannot be protected. Whoever gains,
he must lose. Some years ago the Free Trade League
of New York published a broadside containing cuts of
various articles of necessity marked vuth the duties im-
posed by the tariff, and which read something in this
wise: “The farmer rises in .the morning and draws on
his pantaloons taxed 40 per cent, and his boots taxed 30
per cent., .striking a light with a match taxed 200 per
cent.,” and so on, following him through the day and
through life, until, killed b> taxation, he is lowered
into the grave with a rope taxed 45 per cent. This is
but a graphic illustration of the manner in which such
taxes ultimately fall. The farmer would be a great
gainer by the substitution of a single tax upon the value
of land for. all these taxes, for the taxation of land
values would fall with greatest weight, not upon the
agricultural districts, wLere land values are compara- ■
tively small, but upon the towns and cities where land
values are high; whereas taxes upon personal property
and improvements fall as heavily in the country as in
the city. And in sparsely settled districts there would
be hardly any taxes at all for the farmer to pay. For
taxes, being levied upon the value of the bare land,
would fall as heavily upon unimproved as upon im-
proved land. Acre for acre, the improved and culti-
vated farm, with its buildings, fences, orchard, crops,
and stock, could be taxed no more than unused land of
equal quality. The result would be that speculative
values would be kept down, and that cultivated and im-
proved farms would have no taxes to' p&y until the
country around them had been well settled. Tn fact,
paradoxical as it may at first seem to them, the effect
of putting all taxation upon the value of land would be
to relieve the harder working farmers of . all taxation.
Chap. Ill UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES 451
But the great gain of the working fanner can be
seen only when the effect upon the distribution of popu-
lation is considered. The destruction of speculative land
V values would tend to diffuse population where it is too
dense and- to concentrate it where it is too sparse; to
substitute for' the tenement house, homes surrounded
.by gardens, and fully to settle agricultural districts
before people were driven far from neighbors to look
for land. The people of the cities would thus get more
of the pure air and sunshine of the country, the people
of the country more of the economies and social life of
the city. as is doubtless the case, the application
of machinery tends to large fields, agricultural popula-
tion will assume the primitive form and cluster in
■Villages. The life of the average farmer is now unneces-
sarily dreary. He is not only compelled to work early
3‘nd late, but he is cut off by the sparseness of population
from the conveniences, and amusements, the educational
facilities, and the social and intellectual opportunities
that come with the closer contact of man with man. He
■v^ould be far better off in all these respects, and his
labor would be far more productive, if he and those
^ound him held no more land than they wanted to use.*
^ile his children, as they grew up, would neither be
so impelled to seek the excitement of a city nor would
they be driven so far away to seek farms of their own.
Their means of living would be in their own hands, and
at home.
In short,, the working farmer is both a laborer and
a capitalist, as well as a land owner, and it is by his
1 u the enormous increase in the productive power ot
labor which would result from the better distribution of popu-
lation there would be also a similar economy in the productive
power of land. The concentration of population in cities fed by
he exhaustive cultivation of large, sparsely populated areas,
results in a literal draining into the sea of the, elements of fer-
‘hity. How enormous this waste is may be seen from the
i52
EFFECTS OF THE HEMEDY
Book IX.
labor and capital that his living is made. His loss
would be nominal; his gain would be real and great.
In varying degrees is this true of all land holders.
Many land holders are laborers of one. sort or another.
And it would be hard to find a land ovnier not a laborerj
who is not also a capitalist — while the general rule is,
that the larger the land owner the greater the capital-
ist. So true is this that in common thought the char-
acters are confounded. Thus to put all taxes on the
value of land, while it would be largely to reduce all
great fortunes, would in no case leave the rich man pen-
niless. The Duke of Westminster, who owns a con- •
siderable part of the site of London, is probably the
richest land owner in the world. To take all his ground
rents by taxation would largely reduce his enormous in-
come, but would still leave him his buildings and all the
income from them, and doubtless much personal prop-
erty in various other shapes. He would still have all
he could by any possibility enjoy, and a much better
state of society in which to enjoy it.
So would the Astors of Hew York remain very rich.
And so, I think, it will be seen throughout — ^this meas-
ure would make no one poorer but such as could be
made a great deal poorer without being really hurt.
It would cut down great fortunes, but it would impov-
erish no one.
Wealth would not only be enormously increased;
it would be equally distributed. I do not mean that
each individual would get the same amount of wealth.
That would not be equal distribution, so long as dif-
ferent individuals have different powers and different
desires. But I mean that wealth would be distributed
calculations that have been made as to the sewage of our cities,
and its practical result is to be seen in the diminishing pro-
ductiveness of agriculture in large sections. _ In a great part
of the United States we are steadily exhausting our lands.
Chap. III.
UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES
453
m accordance with the degree in which the industry,
skill, knowledge, or prudence of each contributed to the
common ' stock. The great cause which concentrates
wealth in the hands of those who do not produce, and
takes it from the hands of those who do, would be gone.
The inequalities that continued to exist would be those
of nature, not the artificial inequalities produced by the
denial of natural law. The non-producer would no
longer roll in luxury while the producer got but the
barest necessities of animal existence.
The monopoly of the land gone, there need be no fear
of large fortunes. For then the riches of any individual
Qiust consist of wealth, properly so-called — of wealth,
which is the product of labor, and which constantly
feuds to dissipation, for national debts, I imagine, would
^ot long survive the abolition of the system from which
fbey spring. All fear of great fortunes might be dia
missed, for when every one gets what he fairly earns,
^0 one can get more than he fairly earns. How many
men are there who fairly earn a million dollars?
CHAPTER JY
CP THE CHANGES THAT WOULD BE WEOUGHT IN SOCIAL
ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL LIFE
We are dealing only with general principles. There
are some matters of detail — such as those arising from
the division of revenues between local and general gov-
ernments— ^v^hich upon application of these principles
would come up, but these it is not necessary here to dis-
cuss. When once principles are settled, details will be
readily adjusted.
Nor without too much elaboration is it possible tz'
notice all the changes which would be wrought, or wouK
become possible, by a change which would readjust th
very foundation of society, but to some main features
let me call attention.
Noticeable among these is the, great simplicity which
would become possible in government. To collect taxes,
to prevent and punish evasions, to check and counter-
check revenues drawn from so many distinct sources,
now make up probably three-fourths,' perhaps seven-
eighths of the business of government, outside of the
preservation of order, the maintenance of the military
arm, and the administration of justice. An irnmense
and complicated network of governmental machinery
would thus be dispensed with.
In the administration of justice there would be a like
saving of strain. Much of the civil business of our
courts arises from disputes as to ownership of land.
These would cease when the state was virtually acknowl-
m
C?wip. IV. VFOKT SOCIAL ORGjViaZATION AND LIFE
455
edged as the sole owner of land, and all occupiers became
practically rent-paying tenants. The growth of mor-
^ility consequent upon the cessation of want would tend
to a like dirninution in other civil business of the courts,
'''Vliich could be hastened by the adoption of the com-
mon sense proposition of Bentham to abolish all laws for
the collection of debts and the enforcement of private
contracts. The rise of wages, the opening of oppor-
tunities for all to make an easy and comfortable living,
^ould at once lessen and would soon eliminate from
society the thieves, swindlers, and other classes of crimi-
uals who spring from the unequal distribution of wealth.
Thus the administration of the criminal law, with all its
paraphernalia of policemen, detectives, prisons, and
penitentiaries, would, like the administration of the civil
cease to make such a drain upon the vital force
Slid attention of society. We should get rid not only of
judges, bailiffs, clerks, and prison keepers, but of
the great host of lavyers who are now maintained at
the expense of producers; and talent now wasted in legal
subtleties would be turned to higher pursuits.
The legislative, judicial, and executive functions of
government would in this way be vastly simplified. Nor
thinlc that the public debts and the standing
armies, which are historically the outgrowth of the
change from feudal to allodial tenures, would long re-
gain after the reversion to the old idea that the land
of a country is the common right of the people of the "
country. The former could readily be paid off by a tax
that Would not lessen the wages of labor nor check pro-
uuctibn, ,and the latter the growth of intelligence and
independence among the masses, aided, perhaps, by the
Pi’Ogress, of invention, which is revolutionizing the mili-
tary art,’ must soon cause to disappear.
- Society would thus approach the ideal of Jeffersonian
democracy, the promised land of Herbert Spencer, the
456
EFFECTS OF THE EEMEDY
Book IX,
abolition of government. But of government only as -a
directing and repressive power. It would at the same
time, and in the same degree, become possible for it to
realize the dream of socialism. All this simplification
and abrogation of the present functions of government
would make possible the assumption of certain other
functions which are now pressing for recognition. Gov-
ernment could take upon itself the transmission of mes-
sages by telegraph, as well as by mail; of building and
operating railroads, as well as of opening -and maintain-
ing common roads. With present functions so simplified
and reduced, functions such as these could be assumed
without danger or strain, and would be under the super-
vision of public attention, which is now distracted.
There would be a great and increasing surplus revenue •
from the taxation of land values, for material progress,
which would go on vdth greatly accelerated rapidity,
would tend constantly to increase rent. This revenue
arising from the common property could be applied to
the common benefit, as were the revenues of Sparta.
We might not establish public tables — they would be
unnecessary; but we could establish public baths, mu-
seums, libraries, gardens, lecture rooms, music and
dancing halls, theaters, universities, technical schools,
shooting galleries, play grounds, gymnasiums, etc. Heat,
light, and motive' power, as well as water, might be
conducted through our streets at public expense; our
roads be lined with fruit trees; discoverers and inventors
rewarded, scientific investigations supported; and in a
thousand ways the public revenues made to foster ef-
forts for the public benefit. We should reach the ideal -
of the socialist, but not tlirough government repression.
Government would change its character, and^ would
become the administration of a great co-operative so-
ciety. It would become merely the agency by which the
raop. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 457
common property was administered for the common
benefit.
Does this seem impracticable? Consider for a mo-
ment the vast changes that would be wrought in social
bfe by a change which would assure to labor its full
reward; which would banish w'ant and the fear of want;
and give to the humblest freedom to develop in natural
symmetry.
In thinking of the possibilities of social organization,
^e are apt to assume that greed is the strongest of hu-
man motives, and that systems of administration can
be safely based only upon the idea that the fear of
punishment is necessary to keep men honesk — ^that self-
ish interests are always stronger than general interests.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
' From whence springs this lust for gain, to gratify
n'hich men tread everything pure and noble under their
I®et; to which they sacrifice all the higher possibilities
of. life ; which converts civility into a hollow pretense,
Patriotism into a sham, and religion into hypocrisy;
'^hich makes so 'much of civilized existence an Ishma-
olitish warfare, of which the weapons are cunning and
fraud?
Does it not spring from the existence of want? Car-
lyle somewhere says that poverty is the hell of which the
modern Englishman is most afraid. And he is right.
■Poverty, is the open-mouthed, relentless hell which
^■u^ns beneath civilized society. And it is hell enough,
•lue Vedas declare no truer thing than when the wise
crow Bushanda tells the eagle-bearer of Vishnu that
the keenest pain is in poverty. For poverty is not merely
deprivation; it means shame, degradation; the searing
uf the most sensitive parts of our moral and mental na-
ture as with hot irons; the^ denial of the strongest im-
pulses and the sweetest affections; the wrenching of the
most ,vital nerves. You love your wife, you love your
458
■ EFFECTS OP THE REMEDY
Booh IX.
children I but would it not be easier to see them die
, than to see them reduced to the pinch of want in which
large classes in every highly civilized community live?
The strongest of animal passions is that with which
we cling to life, but it is an everyday occurrence in civil-
ized societies for men to put poison to their mouths or
pistols to their heads from fear of poverty, and for
one who does this there are probably a hundred who
have the desire, but are restrained by instinctive shrink-
by religious considerations, or by family ties.
From this hell of poverty, it is but natural that men
■should make every effort to escape. With the impulse
to self-preservation and self-gratification combine nobler
feelings, and love as well as fear urges in the struggle.
Many a man does a mean thing, a dishonest thing, a
greedy and grasping and unjust thing, in the effort to .
place above want, or the fear of want, mother or wife
or children.
And out of this condition of things arises a public
opinion which enlists, as an impelling power in the
struggle to grasp and to keep, one of the strongest —
perhaps with many men the very strongest — springs of
human action. The desire for approbation, the feeling ,
that urges us to won the respect, admiration, or sym-
pathy of our fellows, is instinctive and universal.- Dis-
torted sometimes into the most abnormal manifestations,
it may yet be eve^where. perceived. It is potent with
the veriest savage, as with the most highly cultivated'
member of the most polished society; it shows itself
with the first gleam of intelligence; and persists to the
.last breath. It triumphs over the love of ease, over the
sense of pain, over the dread of death. It dictates
the most trivial and the most important actions.
The child just beginning to toddle or to talk will make
new efforts as its cunning .little tricks excite attention
and laughter; the dying master of the world gathers his
Chap- IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 459
robes around him, that he maj'- pass away as becomes a.
kibg; Chinese mothers will deform their daughters’ feet
by cruel stoclcs, European women will sacrifice their
own comfort and the comfort of their families to similar
dictates of fashion; the Polynesian, that he may excite
admiration by his beautiful tattoo, will hold himself
still while his flesh is tom by sharks’ teeth; the North
American Indian, tied to the stake, will bear the most
fiendish tortures wdthout a moan, and, that he may be
respected and admired as a great brave, will taunt his
tormentors to new cmelties. It is this that leads the
forlorn hope; it is this that trims the lamp of the pale
student; it is this that impels men to strive, to strain,
fo toil, and to die. It is this that raised the pyramids
sod that fired the Ephesian dome.
^ow, men admire what they desire. How sweet to
■fbe storm-stricken seems the safe harbor; food to the
hungry, drink to the thirsty, warmth to the shivering,
rest to the weary, power to the weak, knowledge to him
lo whom the intellectual yearnings of the soul have been
aroused. And thus the sting of want and the fear of
^'ant make men admire above all things the possession
of riches, and to become wealthy is to become respected,
^od admired, and influential. Get money — honestly, if
you can, but at any rate get money ! This is the lesson
that society is daily and hourly dinning in the ears of
As members. Men instinctively admire virtue and truth,
but the .sting of want and the fear of want make them
O'^'en more' strongly admire the rich and sympathize with
the fortunate. It is well to be honest and just, and men
'^'^ill commend it; but he who by fraud and injustice gets
him a, million dollars will have more respect, and admira-
tion, and influence, more eye service and lip service, if
^ot heart service, than he who refuses it. The one may
have his reward in the future; he may know that his
Rame is writ in, .the Book of Life, and that for him is
460
EFFECTS OF THE EEMEDY
Booh IX.
the white robe and the palm branch of the victor against
ternptationj but the other has his reward in the present.
His name is writ in tlie list of ''our substantial citizens;''
he has the courtship of men and the flattery of women;
the best pew in the church and the personal regard of
the eloquent clerg5''man who in the name of Christ
preaches the Gospel of Dives, and tones down into a
meaningless flower of Eastern speech the stern metaphor
of the camel and the needle’s eye. He may be a patron
of arts, a Maecenas to men of letters; may profit by the
converse of the intelligent, and be polished by the attri-
tion of the refined. His alms may feed the poor, and
help the struggling, and bring sunshine into desolate
places; and noble public institutions commemorate, after
he is gone, his name and his fame. It is not in tbe^
guise of a hideous monster, with horns and tail, that
Satan tempts the children of men, but as an angel of
light. His promises are not alone of the kingdoms of
the world, Tjut of mental and moral principalities and
powers. He appeals not only to the animal appetites,
but to the cravings that stir in man because he is more
than an animal.
Take the case of those miserable "men with muck-
rakes,” who are to be seen in eveiy community as plainly
as Bunyan saw their type in his vision — w'ho, long after
they have accumulated wealth enough to satisfy every
desire, go on working, scheming, striving to add riches
to riches. It was the desire "to be something;” nay, in
many cases, the desire to do noble and generous deeds,
that started them on a career of money getting. And
what compels them to it long after every possible need
is satisfied, what -urges them still with unsatisfied and
ravenous greed, is not merely the force of tyrannous
habit, but the subtler gratifications which the possession
of riches gives — ^the sense of power and influence, the
sense of being looked up to and respected, the sense that
^ap.iv: UPON SOCIAL OEGANIZATION AND LIFE 461
their wealth not merely raises them above want, but
makes them men of mark in the community in which
they live." - It is this that makes the rich man so loath to
part with his money, so anxious to get more.
Against temptations that thus appeal to the strongest
impulses of our nature, the sanctions of law and the pre-
cepts of religion can effect but little; and the wonder is,
not that men are so self-seeking, but that they are not
much more so. That under present circumstances men
are not more grasping, more unfaithful, ruore selfish
than they are, proves the goodness and fruitfulness of
human nature, the ceaseless flow of the perennial foun-
tains from which its moral qualities are fed. All of^ us
have mothers; most of us have children, and so faith,
nnd purity, and unselfishness can never be utterly ban-
ished from the world, howsoever bad be social adjust-
ments.
But whatever is potent for evil may be made potent
for good. The change I have proposed would destroy
the- conditions that distort impulses in themselves benefi-
cent, and would transmute the forces which now tend
to disintegrate society into forces which would tend to
ouite and purify it.
Give lalDor a free field and its full earnings, take for
the benefit of the whole community that fund which the
growth of the community creates, and want and the fear
of Want would be gone. The springs of production would
'be set free, and the enormous increase of wealth would
give the poorest ample comfort. ' Men would no more
V'orry about finding employment than they worry about
finding air to breathe; they need have no more care
nbout physical necessities than do the lilies of the field.
The progress of science, the march of invention, the
diffusion of knowledge, would bring their benefits to all.
With this abolition of want and the fear of want, the
admiration of riches would decay, and men would seek
462
EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY
Book IX
the respect and approbation of their fellows in other
inodes than by the acquisition and display of wealth. In
this way there would be brought to the management of
public affairs, and the administration of common funds,
the skill, the attention, the fidelity, and integrity that
can now be secured only for private interests, and a rail-
road or gas works might be operated on public account,
not onty more economically and efiiciently than as at
present, under joint stock management, but as econom-
ically and efficiently as would be possible under a single
ownership. The prize of the Olympian games, that ,
called forth the most strenuous exertions of all Greece,
was but a wreath of wild olive; for a bit of ribbon men
have over and over again performed services no money
could have bought.
Shortsighted is the "philosophy which counts on self-
ishness as the master motive of human action. It is
blind to facts of which the world is full. It sees not
the present, and reads not the past aright, .If you would
move men to action, to what shall you appeal? Not to
their pockets, but to their patriotism; not to selfishness,
but to sympathy. Self-interest is, as it were, a mechan-
ical force — ^potent, it is true; capable of large' and wide
results. But there is in human nature what may be
likened to a chemical force; which melts and fuses and
overwhelms; to which nothing seems impossible. '^All
that a man hath will he give for his life” — that is self-
interest. But in loyalty to higher impulses men will give
even life.
It is not selfishness that enriches the annals of every
people with heroes and saints. It is not selfishness that
on every page of the world's history bursts out in sudden
splendor of noble deeds or sheds the soft radiance of
benignant lives. It was not selfishness that turned
Gautama’s back to his royal home or bade the Maid of
Orleans lift the sword from the altar; that held the
CTiap. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 463
Three Hundred in the Pass of Thermopylaj, or gathered
into Winkelried's bosom the sheaf of spears; that
chained Vincent de Paul to the bench of the galley, or
brought little starving children, during the Indian fam-
ine, tottering to the relief stations with yet weaker
starvelings in their arms. Call it religion, patriotism,
sympathy, the enthusiasm for humanity, or the love
of God — give it what name you will; there is yet a
force which overcomes and drives out selfishness; a force
ivhich is the electricity of the moral universe; a force
beside which all others are weak. Everywhere that men
have lived it has shown its power, and to-day, as ever,
the world is full of jt. To be pitied is the man who has ,
never seen and never felt it. Look around! among com-
mon men and women, amid the care and the struggle of
^nily life^ in the jar of the noisy street and. amid the
squalor, where want hides — every here and there is the
darkness lighted with the tremulous pla}’- of its lambent
dames. He who has not seen it has walked with shut
,cyes. He who looks may see, as says Plutarch, that
the soul has a principle of kindness in itself, and is
born to, love, as well as to perceive, think, or remember.”
And this force of forces — ^that now goes to waste or
assumes 'perverted forms — ^we may use for the strength-
®mng, and building up, and ennobling of society, if we
but will, just as we now use physical forces that once
seemed but powers of destruction. All we have to do is
but to give it freedom and scope. The wrong that pro-
duces inequality; the wrong that in the midst of abun-
dance tortures men with want or harries them with the
fear of want; that stunts thern physically,- degrades them
mtellectually, and distorts them morally, is’ what alone
■prevents harmonious social development. For “all that
is from the gods is full of providence. We are made for,
Co-operation — like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the
rows of the upper and lower teeth.”
<164
EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY
Book IX.
There are people into whose heads it never enters to
conceive of any better state of society than that which .
now exists — ^who imagine that the idea that there could
be^ a state of society in which greed would be banished,
prisons stand empty, individual interests be subordi-
nated to general interests, and no one seek to rob or to
oppress his neighbor, is but the- dream of impracticable
dreamers, for whom these practical level-headed men,
who pride themselves on recognizing facts as they are,
have a hearty contempt. But such men — ^though some
of them write books, and some of them occupy the chairs
of universities, and some of them stand in pulpits — do
not think.
If they were accustomed to dine in such eating houses
as are to be found in the dower quarters of London and
Paris, where the knives and forks are chained to the
table, they would deem it the natural, ineradicable dis-
position of man to carry off the knife and fork with
which he has eaten.
Take a company of well-bred men and women dining
together. There is no struggling for food, no attempt
on the part of any one to get more than his neighbor;
no attempt to gorge or to carry off. On the contrary,
each one is anxious to help his neighbor before he par-
takes himself; to offer to others the best rather than
pick it out for himself; and should any one show the
slightest disposition to prefer the gratification of his own
appetite to that of the others, or in any way to act the
pig or pilferer, the swift and , heavy penalty of social
contempt and ostracism would -show how such conduct
is reprobated by common opinion.
All this is' so common as to excite no remark, as to
seem the natural state of things. Yet it is no more
natural that men should not be greedy of food than
that they should not be greedy of wealth. They are
greedy of food when they are not assured that there will
CTwp. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 4b{}
be a fair and equitable distribution which will give each
enough. But when these conditions are assured, they
cease to be greedy of food. And so in society, as at
present constituted, men are greedy of wealth because
the conditions of distribution are so unjust that instead
of each being sure of enough, many are certain to bo
condemned to want. It is the “devil catch the hind-’
most” of present social adjustments that causes the racn
and scramble for wealth, in which all considerations ol
justice, mercy, religion, and sentiment are trampled
under foot; in which men forget their ovm souls, and
struggle to the very verge of the grave for what they
cannot take beyond. But an equitable distribution of
wealth, that would exempt all from the fear .of _ want.
Would destroy the greed of wealth, just as in polite so-
ciety the greed of food has been destroyed. _
On the crowded steamers of the early California lines;
there was often a marked difference between the manners
of the steerage and the cabin, which illustrates this prin-
ciple of human nature. An abundance of food was pro-
vided for the steerage as for the cabin, but in the former
there were no regulations which insured efidcient service,
and the meals became a scramble. In the cabin, on the
contrary, where each was allotted his place and there
was no fear that everyone would not get enough, there
was no such scrambling and waste as were witnessed in
- the steerage. The difference was not in the character of
the people, but simply in this fact. The cabin pas-
senger transferred to the steerage would participate in
the greedy rush, and the steerage passenger transferred
to the cabin would at once become decorous and polite.
The same difference would show itself in society m
■ general were the present unjust distribution of wealth
replaced by a just distribution. ^ n j
Consider this existing fact of a cultivated and
society, in which all the coarser passions are held m
466
EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY
Boole /X
check, not by force, not by law, but by common opinion
and the mutual desire of pleasing If this is possible
for a part of a community, it is possible for a whole com-
munity. There are states of society in which every ohs
has to go armed — ^in which every one has to hold him-
self in readiness to defend person and property with the
strong hand. If we liave progressed beyond that, we
may progress still further.
But it may be said, to banish want and the fear of
want, would be to destroy the stimulus to exertion; men
would become simply idlers, and such a happy state of
general comfort and content wmuld be the death of prog-
ress. This is the old slaveholders’ argument, that men
can be driven to labor only with the lash. Nothing is
more untrue.
Want might be banished, but desire would remain.
Man is the unsatisfied animal. He has but begun to ex-
plore, and the universe lies before him. Each step that
he takes opens new vistas and kindles new desires. He is
the constructive animal; he builds, he improves, he
invents, and puts together, and the greater the thing he
does, the greater the thing he wants to do. He is more
than an animal. Whatever be the intelligence that
breathes through nature, it is in that likeness that man
is made. The steamship, driven by her throbbing en-
gines through the sea, is in kind, though not in degree,
as much a creation as the whale that swims beneath.
The telescope and the microscope, what are they but
added eyes, which man has made for himself; the soft
webs and fair colors in which our women array them-
selves, do they not answer to the plumage that nature
gives the bird? Man must be doing soihething, or fancy
that he is doing something, for in him throbs the crea-
tive impulse; the mere -basker in the sunshme is not a
natural, but an abnormal man. _ •
• As soon as a child can command its muscles, it will
Chap. IV. UPON' SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE 467
begin to make mud pies or- dress a doll; its play is but
the imitation of the. work of its elders; its very de-
structiveness arises from the desire to be doing some-
thing, from the satisfaction of seeing itself accomplish
something. There is no such thing as the pursuit of
pleasure for the sake of pleasure. Our very amuse-
ments amuse only as they are, or simulate, the learning
or the doing of something. The moment they cease to
appeal either to our inquisitive or to our constructive
powers, they cease to amuse. It will spoil the interest
of the novel reader to be told just how the story will
ond; it is only the chance and the skill involved in the
game that enable the card-player to “kill time" by
shuffling bits of pasteboard. The luxurious frivolities
of Versailles were possible to human beings only because
fhe king thought he was governing a kingdom and the
courtiers were' in pursuit of fresh honors and new pen-
sions. People who lead what are called lives of fashion
and pleasure must have some other object in view, or
they would die of ennui; they support it only because
they imagine that they are gaining position, making
friends, or improving the chances of their children.'
Shut a man up, and deny him employment, and he must
either die or go mad.
It is not labor dn itself that is repugnant to man; it is
iiot the natural necessity for exertion which is a curse.
It is only labor which produces nothing— exertion pf
■which he cannot see the results. To toil day after day,
and yet get but the necessaries of life, this is indeed
hard; it is like the infernal punishment of compelling
a man to pump lest he be drowned, or to trudge on a
treadmill lest he be crushed. But, released from this
necessity, men would but wmrk the harder and the bet-
ter, for then they would work as their inclinations led
them; then would they seem to be really doing some-
thing for themselves or for others, Humboldt’s
468
EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY
Booh IX
life an idle one? Did Franklin find no occupation when
he retired from the printing business with enough to
live on? Is Herbert Spencer a laggard? Did Michael
Angelo paint for board and clothes?
The fact is that the work which improves the condi-
tion of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and
increases power, and enriches literature, and elevates
thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the
work of slaves, driven to their task either by the lash of
a master or by animal necessities. It is the work of men
who perform it for its own sake, and not that they may
get more to eat or drink, or wear, or display. In a state
of society w'here want was abolished, work of this sort
Would be enormously increased.
I am inclined to think that the result of confiscating
rent in the manner I have proposed would be to . cause
the organization of labor, wherever large capitals were
used, to assume the co-operative form, since the more
equal diffusion of wealth would unite capitalist and
laborer in the same person. But whether this vmuld be
so or not is of little moment. The hard toil of routine
labor would disappear. Wages would be too high and
opportunities too great to compel any man to stint and
starve the higher qualities of his nature, and in every
avocation the brain would aid the hand. Work, even of
the coarser kinds, would become a lightsome thing, and
the tendency of modern production to subdivision would
not involve monotony or the contraction of ability in the
worker; but would be relieved by short hours, by change,
by the alternation of intellectual with manual occupa-
tions. There would result, not only the utilization of
productive forces now going to waste; not only would
our present knowledge, now so imperfectly applied, be
fully used; but from the mobility of labor and the men-
tal activity which would be generated, there would result
469
Chap. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND LIFE
advances in the methods of production that we now
cannot imagine. . ^ ,,
For, greatest of all the enormous wastes which the
present constitution of societ3’^ involves, is that of mental
power. How infinitesimal are the forces that concur to
the advance of chdlization, as compared to the forces
that lie latent! How few are the thinkers, the discover-
ers, the inventors, the organizers, as compared with the
gi’eat mass of .the people! Yet such men are bom in
plenty; it is the conditions that permit so few to de-
velop. There are among men infinite diversities of apti-
tude and inclination, as there are such infinite diversities
in physical structure that among a million there will not
,be two that cannot be told apart. But, both from
observation and reflection, I am inclined to think tna
the differences of natural power are no greater than the
differences of stature or of physical strength. Turn to
the lives of great men, and see how easily they mig t
never have been heard of. Had Csesar come of a prole-
tarian family; had. Napoleon entered the world a few
years earlier; had Columbus gone into the Church in-
stead of going to sea; had Shakespeare been apprenticed
to a cobbler or chimney-sweep; had Sir Isaac Newton
, been assigned by fate the education and the toil of an
agricultural laborer; had Dr. Adam Smith been born m
"the coal hews, or Herbert Spencer forced to get liis liv-
ing as a factory operative, what would their talents have
availed? But there would have been, it will be said,
other Caesars or Napoleons, Columbuses or Shakespeares,
teutons. Smiths or Spencers. This is true. , And it
shows how prolific is our human nature. As the com-
nion worker is on need transformed into queen bee, so,
When circumstances favor his development, what might
otherwise pass dor a common man rises into a hero or
leader, discoverer or teacher, sage or saint. So widely ^
has the sower scattered the seed, so strong is the ger-
470
EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY
Booh IX.
minative force that bids it bud and blossom. But, ala?
for the stony ground, and the birds' and the tares ! For
one who attains his full stature, how many^ are. stunted
and deformed.
The will within us is the ultimate fact of conscious-
ness. Yet how little have the best of us, in acquirements,
in position, even in character, that may be cred-
ited entirely to ourseh'es; how much to the influences
that have molded us. Who is there, wise, learned, dis- ,
Greet, or strong, who might not, were he to trace the
inner historj’’ of his life, turn, like the Stoic Emperor, '
to give thanks to the gods, that by this one and that; one,
and here and there, good examples have been set him,
noble thoughts have reached him, and happy opportuni-
ties opened before him. Who is there, ‘who, with his
eyes about him, has reached the meridian of life, who has
not sometimes- echoed the thought of the pious English-
man, as the criminal passed to the gallows, ‘'^But for the
grace of God, there go How little does heredity
count as compared with conditions. This one, we say, is
the result of a thousand years of European progress, and
that one of a thousand years of Chinese petrifaction;
yet, placed an infant in the heart of China, and but for
the angle of the eye or the shade of the hair, the Cau-
casian would grow up as those around him, using the
same speech, thinking the same thoughts, exhibiting the
same tastes. Change Lady Vere de Vere in her cradle'
with an infant of the slums, and will the blood of a hun-
dred earls give, you a refined and cultured woman?
To remove want and the fear of want, to give to all
classes leisure, and coriifort, and independence, the de-
cencies and refinements of life, the opportunities of
mental and moral development, would be like turning
water into a desert. The sterile waste would clothe
itself with verdure, and the barren places where life
* seemed banned would ere long be , dappled with the '
Chap. IV. UPON bOCIAL ORGANIZATION. AND LIFE 47^
/
shade of trees and musical with the song of birds. Tal-
ents now hidden, virtues unsuspected, would come forth
to make human life richer, fuller, happier, nobler. For
in these round men who are stuck into three-cornered
holes, and three-cornered men who are jammed into
round holes; in these men who are wasting their energies
in the scramble to be rich; in these who ip factories
are turned into machines, or are chained by necessity to
bench or plow; in these children who are growing up in
squalor, and vice, and ignorance, are powers of the
highest order, talents the most splendid. They need but
the opportunity to bring them forth.
Consider the possibilities of a state of society that
gave that opportunity to all. Let imagination fill out
the picture; its colors grow too bright for words to
paint. Consider the moral elevation, the intellectual
activity, the social life. Consider how by a thousand
actions and interactions the members of every com-
iniinity are linked together, and how in the present con-
dition of things even the fortunate few who stand upon
^he apex of the social pyramid must suffer, though they
know it not, from the want, ignorance, and degradation
that are underneath. Consider these things and then
®ay whether the change I propose would not be for. the
benefit of every one — even the greatest land holder?
^ould he not be safer of the future of his children in
leaving them ‘penniless in such a state of society than
in leaving them the largest fortune in this? Did such
n state of society anywhere exist, would he not buy
entrance to it cheaply by giving up all his possessions?
I have now traced to their source social weakness and
disease. I have shown the remedy. I Lave covered
every point and met every objection. But the problems
that We have been considering, great as they are, pass
into problems greater yet — into the grandest problems
■^ith which the human mind can grapple. I ' am about
472 EFFECTS of’ THE REMEDY Book lX
to ask the reader who has gone with me so far, to go
with me further, into still higher fields. But I ask him
to remember that in the little space which remains of
the limits to which this book must be confined, I cannot
fully treat the questions which arise, I can but suggest
some thoughts, which may, perhaps, serve as hints for
further thought.
BOOK X
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS
CHAPTER L — ^THE CURRENT THEORY OF HUMAN PROGRESS
ITS INSUFFICIENCy
CHAPTER IL — ^DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION TO WHAT DUE
CHAPTER HI —THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS
' CHAPTER rV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE
CHAPTER V. — ^THE CENTRAL TRUTH
What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support
That to the height of this great argument
[ may assert eternal Providence
•And justify the ways of God to men.
— Milton.
CHAPTER I
the current theory of human progress — ITS
INSUFFICIENCY
li the conclusions at which we have arrived are cor-
J’ect, thej’’ will fall under a larger generalization.
Let us, therefore, recommence our inquiry from a
i'igher standpoint, whence we' may survey a wider field.
is the lav) of human progress?
This is a question which, were it not for what has
gone before, I should hesitate to review in the brief
space I can now devote to it, as it involves, directly or
indirectly, some of the very highest problems with which
the human mind can engage. But it is a question which
naturally comes up. Are or are not the conclusions to
which We have come consistent with the great law under
which human development goes on?
‘ What is that law? We must find the answer to our
question; for the current philosophy, though it clearly
recognizes the existence of such a law, gives no more sat-
isfactory account of it than the current political economy
^oes of the persistence of want amid advancing wealth.
Let us, as far as possible, keep to the finn ground of
facts. Whether man was or was not gradually developed
from an animal, it is- not necessary to inquire. However
Ultimate may be the connection between questions which ’
relate to man as we know him and questions which relate
fo his genesis, it is only from the former upon the latter
that light can be thrown. Inference cannot proceed
from the unknown to the known. It is only from facts
475
476
the law of human progress
Boole X,
of which we are cognizant that we can infer what has
preceded cognizance. >
However man may have originated, all we know of
him is as man — ^just as he is now to be found. There is
no record or trace of him in any lower condition than
that in which savages are still to be met. By whatever
bridge he may have crossed the wide chasm which now
separates him from the brutes, there remain of it no
vestiges. Between the lowest savages of whom we know
and the highest animals, there is an irreconcilable differ-
ence— a difference not merely of degree, but of kind.
Many of the characteristics, actions, and emotions of
man are exhibited by the lower animals; but man, no
matter how low in the scale of humanity, has never yet
been found destitute of one thing of which no animal
shows the slightest trace, a clearly recognizable but al-
most undefinable something, which gives him the power
of improvement — which makes him the progressive
animal.
The beaver builds a dam, and the bird a nest, and the
bee a cell; but while beavers' dams, and birds’ nests,
and bees’ cells are always constructed on the same model,
the house of the mau/passes from the rude hut of leaves
and branches to the magnificent mansion replete with
modern conveniences. The dog can to a certain extent
connect cause and effect, and may be taught some tricks;
but his capacity in these respects has not been a whit
increased during all the ages he has been the associate of
improving man, and the dog of civilization is not a'
whit more accomplished or intelligent than the dog of
the wandering savage. We know of no animal that
uses clothes, that cooks its food, that makes itself tools
or weapons, that breeds other animals that it wishes to
eat, or that has an articulate language. But men who
do not do such things have never yet been found, or
heard of, except in fable. That is to say, man, wherever
Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY 4:7'f
We know him, exhibits this power — of supplementing
what nature has done for him by what he does for him-
self; and, in fact, so inferior is the physical endowment
of man, that there is no part of the world, save perhaps
some of the small islands of the Pacific, where without
this faculty he could maintain an existence.
Man everywhere and at all times exhibits this faculty
—everywhere and at all times of which we have knowl-
odge he has made some use of it. But the degree in
which this has been done greatly varies. Between the
rude canoe and the steamship; between the boomerang
sud the repeating rifle; between the roughly carved
Wooden idol and the breathing marble of Grecian art;
oetween savage knowledge and modem science; between
“Ue wild Indian and the white settler ; between the Hot:^
toutot woman and the belle of polished society, there
^s an enormous difference.
The varying degrees in which this faculty is used can-
not be ascribed to differences in original capacity — ^the
ruost highly improved peoples of the present day were
savages within historic times, and we meet with the
^dest differences between peoples of the same stock,
■^or can they be wholly ascribed to differences in physi-
environment — ^the cradles of learning and the arts
now in many cases tenanted by barbarians, and
within a few years great cities rise on the hunting
S^ounds of wild tribes. All these differences are evi-
uently connected with social development. Beyond
Perhaps the veriest rudiments, it becomes possible for.
^an to improve only as he lives with his fellows. All
^uese improvements, therefore, in man’s powers and
Conditions we summarize in the term civilization. Men
^ttiproye as they become civilized, or learn to co-operate '
society.
^hat is the. law of this improvement? By what com-
Paon principle can we explain the different stages of civi-
478
Book X
THE LAW OF HUMAN PEOGRESS
/ization at which different communities have arrived?
. n Y^at consists essentially the progress of civilization,
so that we may say of varying social adjustments, this
nvors it, and^ that does not; or explain why an institu-
tion or condition which may at one time advance it may
at another time retard it?
The prevailing belief noV/ is, that the progress of civi-
lization is a development or evolution, in the course of
which man’s powers are increased and his qualities im-
proved by the operation of causes similar to those which
ap relied upon as explaining the genesis of species—
viz., the survival of the fittest and the hereditary trans-
mission of acquired qualities.
That civilization is an evolution — ^that it is, in the
language of Herbert. Spencer, a progress from an in-
definite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent
heterogeneity — there is no doubt; but to say this is not
to explain or identify the causes which forward or retard
it. How far the sweeping generalizations of Spencer,
which seek to account for all phenomena under terms
of matter and force, may, properly understood, include
all these causes, I am unable to say; but, as scientifically
expounded, the development philosophy has either not
yet definitely met this question, or has given birth, or
rather coherency, to an opinion which does not accord
with the facts.
The vulgar explanation > of progress is, I think, very
much like the view naturally taken by the money maker
of the causes of the unequal distribution of wealth. His
theory, if he has one, usually is, that there is plenty of
money to be made by those who have will and ability,
and that it is i^prance; or idleness, or extravagance,
that makes the difference between the rich and the poor.
And so the common explanation of differences^ of civili-
zation is of differences in capacity. The civilized races
are the superior races, and advance in civilization is ac-
Cscp, 1. INSUFFICrENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY 479
cording to this superiority — ^just as English victories
in common English opinion, due to the natural
superiority of Englishmen to frog-eating Frenchmen ; and
popular government, active invention, and greater aver-
age comfort are, or were until lately, in common Ameri-
can opinion, due to the greater "’smartness of the Yankee
^"ation»
Now, just as the politico-economic doctrines which in
the beginning of this inquiiy we met and disproved,
harmonize wdth the common opinion of men who see
capitalists paying wages and competition reducing wages;'
just as the Malthusian theory harmonized with existing
prejudices both of the rich and the poor; so does the ex-
planation of progress as a gradual race improvement
harmonize with the vulgar opinion which accounts by
^ace differences for differences in civilization. It has
given coherence and a scientific formula to opinions
v^hich already prevailed. Its wonderful spread since the
^luie Darwin first startled the world with his "Origin
01 Specie's” has not been so much a conquest as an as-
siiuilation.
. The view which now dominates the world of thought
is this: That the struggle for existence, just in propor-
tion as it becomes intense, impels men to new efforts and
juventions. That this improvement and capacity for
improvement is fixed by hereditary transmission, and
oictended -by the tendency of the best adapted individual,
or most improved individual, to survive and propagate
smong individuals, and of the best adapted, or most im-
proved tribe, .nation, or race to survive in the struggle
stween social aggregates. On this theory the differ-'
suces between man and the animals, and differences in
the relative progress oi men, are now explained as confi-
dently, and all but as generally, as a little while ago they
^^re upon the theory of special creation and
divine interposition.
480
THE LAW OP HUMAN PROGRESS
Book X.
The practical outcome of this theory is in a sort of
hopeful fatalism, of which current literature is. full.* In
this view, progress is the result of forces which work
slowly, steadily, and remorselessly, for the elevation of
man. War, slavery, tyranny, superstition, famine, and
pestilence, the want and misery which fester in modern
civilization, are the impelling causes which drive man
on, by eliminating poorer types and extending the
higher; and hereditary transmission is the power by
which advances are fixed, and past advances made the
footing for new advances. The individual is the result
of changes thus impressed upon and perpetuated through
a long series of past individuals, and the social organiza-
tion takes its form from the individuals of which it is
composed. Thus, while this theory is, as Herbert
Spencer saysf — “radical to a degree beyond anjdihing
which current radicalism conceives,’' inasmuch as it
looks for changes in the very nature of man; it is at the
same time “conservative to a degree beyond anyi;hing
conceived by current conservatism,” inasmuch as it holds
that no change can avail save these slow changes in
men’s natures. Philosophers may teach that this does
not lessen the duty of endeavoring to reform abuses,
' semi-scientific or popularized form this may perhaps be
seen in best, because frankest, expression in “The Martyrdom
of Man,” by Winwood Reade, a writer of singular vividness and
power. This book' is in reality a history of progress, or, rather,
a monograph upon its causes and methods, and will well repay
perusal for its vivid pictures, whatever may be thought of the
capacity of the author for philosophic generalization. The con-
nection between subject and title may be seen by the conclu-
sion: “I give to universal history a strange but true title —
The Martyrdom of Man. In each generation the human race
has been tortured that their children might profit by their woes.
-Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies of- the past. Is
it therefore unjust that we also should suffer for the benefit of
those who are to come?”
t“The Study of Sociology”— Conclusion.
Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY 48l
just as the theologians who taught predestinarianism in-
sisted on the duty of all to struggle for salvation; but,
^s generally apprehended, the result is fatalism — ^“do
■what we may, the mills of the gods grind on regardless
either of our aid or our hindrance.” I allude to this only
to illustrate what I take to be the opinion now rapidly
spreading and permeating common thought; not that in
the search for truth any regard for its effects should
be permitted to bias the mind. But this I take to be
the current view of civilization: That it is the result of
torces, operating in the way indicated, which slowly
change the character, and improve and elevate the pow-
ers of man; that the difference between civilized man
and savage is of a long race education, which has be-
come permanently fixed in mental organization ; and that
this improvement tends to go on increasingly, to a
higher and higher civilization. We have reached such
a point that progress seems to be natural with us, and
^0 look forward confidently to the greater achievements
of the coming race — some even holding that the progress
of science will finally give men immortality and enable
them to make bodily the tour not only of the planets,
out of the fixed stars, and at length to manufacture suns
and systems for themselves.*
But without soaring to the stars, the moment that
this theory of progression, which seems so natural to us
amid an advancing civilization, looks around the world,
it comes against an enormous fact — ^the fixed, petrified
Civilizations. The majority of the human race to-day
have no idea of progress; the majority of thie human race
to-day look (as until a few generations ago our own an-
cestors looked) upon the past as the time of human per-
fection. The ' difference between the savage and the
Civilized man may be explained on the theory that thta
*Wiiiwood Reade, “The Martyrdom of Man.”
m
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS
Books
former is as yet so imperfectly developed that his prog-
ress is hardly apparent; but how, upon the theory thal
human progress is the result of general and continuouj
causes, shall we account for the civilizations that ha^'6
progressed so far and then stopped? It cannot be said
of the Hindoo and of the Chinaman, as it may be said of
the savage, that our superiority is the result of a longer
education; tliat we are, as it were^ the grown men of
nature, while they are the children. The Hindoos and
the Chinese were civilized when we were savages. They
had great cities, highly organized and powerful govern-
ments, literatures, philosophies, polished manners, con-
siderable division of labor, large commerce, and elaborate
arts, when our ancestors were wandering barbarians,
living in huts and skin tents, not a whit further ad-
vanced than the American Indians. While we have pro-
gressed from this savage state to Nineteenth Century
civilization, they have stood still. If progress be the
result of fixed laws, inevitable and eternal, which impel
men forward, how shall we account for this?
One of the best popular expounders of the develop-
ment philosophy, Walter Bagehot (^Thysics and Poli-
tics”), admits the force of this objection, and endeavors
in this way to explain it; That the first thing necessary
to civilize man is to tame him; to induce him to live in
association with his fellows in subordination to law ; and
hence a body or “cake” of laws and customs grows up,
being intensified and extended by natural selection, the
tribe or nation thus bound together having an advantage
over those who are not. That this cake of custom and
law finally becomes, too thick and hard to permit further
progress, which can go on only as circumstances occur
which introduce discussion, and thus permit the freedom
and mobility necessary to improvement.
This explanation, which Mr. Bagehot offers, as he
says, wdth some misgivings, is I think at the expense of
483.
^P- 1. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY
general theory. But it is not worth while speaking
of that, for it, manifestly, does not explain the facts.
The hardening tendency of which Mr. Bagehot speaks
would show itself at a very early period of develop-
oient, and his illustrations of it are nearly all drawn
fi’om savage or semi-savage life. Whereas, these ar-
rested civilizations had gone a long distance before they
stopped. There must have been a time when they were
"^ery far advanced as compared with the savage state,
and were' yet plastic, free, and advancing. These ar-
rested civilizations stopped at a point which was hardly
in anything inferior and in many respects superior to
•European civilization of, say, the sixteenth or at any
rate the. fifteenth century. Up to that point then there
^ust have been discussion, the hailing of what was new,
end mental activity of all sorts. They had architects
who, carried the art of building, necessarily by a series ; >
of innovations or improvements, up to a very high point;
^hip-builders who in the same way, by innovation after
innovation, finally produced as good a vessel as the
War ships of Henry Will; inventors who stopped only
on the verge of our most iiiiportant improvements, and
ironi some of whom we can yet learn; engineers who con-
structed great ' irrigation works and navigable canals;
i^ival schools of philosophy and conflicting ideas of
^h^on. One great religion, in many respects resembling
'Christianity, rose in India, displaced the old religion,
passed into China, sweeping over that country, and was
displaced again in its old seats, just as Christianity was
displaced in its first seats. There was life, and active
and the innovaxion that begets improvement, long
alter men had learned to live together. And, moreover,
^oth India and China have received the infusion of new
uie in conquering races, with different customs and
^odes of thought.
■ The most fixed and petrified of all civilizations oj
484
THE LAW OF HUJIAN PROGRESS
Books.-
which we know anything was that of Egj^'pt, where
even art finally assumed a conventional and inflexible
form. But we know that behind this must have been a
time of life and vigor — a freshly developing and expand-
ing civilization, such as ours is now — or the arts and
sciences could never have been carried to such a pitch.
And recent excavations have brought to light from be-
neath wdiat w’'e before knew of Egypt an earlier Egypt
still — ^in statues and carvings which, instead of a hard
and formal type, beam with life and expression, which
show’^ art struggling, ardent, natural, and free, the sum
indication of an active and expanding life. So it must
have been once with all now unprogressiye civilizations.
But it is not merely these arrested civilizations that
the current theory of development fails to account for.
It is not merely that men have gone so far on the patn
of progress and then stopped; it is that men have gone
far on the path of progress and then gone
not merely an isolated case that thus confronts the
theory-ft is the universal .rule. Eveiy. civilization that
the world has yet seen has ‘had its period of vigorous
growth, of arrest and stagnation; its ^ . v ^ ,
Of all the civilizations that have arisen and Aouri.hej
there remain to-day but those that have been arre^d,
and our own, which is not yet as old as f ®
mids when Abraham looked upon them-while behind
the pyramids were twenty centuries of recorded history.
That our own civilization has a broader base, is of a
more advanced type, moves quicker and soars higher
than any preceding cWIiaafen is
in these respects it is hardly more m advance oi r
Greco-Roman civilization than that was m a vance
Sic civilization; and if it were, that would prove
Tinthine as to its permanence and future advance,
it be iown that it is superior in those things which
O-ap. I. IKSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY 485
caused the ultimate failure of its predecessors. The
current theory does not assume this.
In truth, nothing could be further from explaining
the facts of universal history than this theory that
civilization is the result of a course of natural selection
■which operates to improve and elevate the powers of
tt>au. That civilization has arisen at different times in
different places and has progressed at different rates, is
iiot inconsistent with this theory; for that might result
from the unequal balancing of impelling and resisting
forces; but that progress everywhere commencing, for
even among the lowest tribes it is held that there has
been some progress, has nowhere been continuous, but
bas everywhere been brought to a stand or retrogres-
sion, is absolutely inconsistent. For if progress operated
fo fix an improvement in man’s nature and thus to pro-
duce further progress, though there might be occasional
interruption, yet the general rule would be that progress
Would be continuous— that advance would lead to ad-
''’nnce, and civilization develop into higher civilization.
Not merely the general rule, but the universal rule,
is the reverse of this. The earth is the tomb of the dead
empires, no less than of dead men. Instead of progress
fitting men for greater progress, every civilization that
Was in its own' time as vigorous and advancing as ours
is now, has of itself come to a stop. Over and over
^ngain, art has declined, learning sunk, power waned,
population become sparse, until the people who had
built great temples and mighty cities, turned rivers and
pierced mountains, cultivated the earth like a garden
^ud introduced the utmost refinement into the minute-
S'ffairs-of life, remained but in a remnant of squalid
, barbarians, who 'had lost even the memory of what their
eucestors had done, and regarded the surviving fragments
of their grandeur as the work of genii, or of the mighty
^ace before the flood. So true is this, that when we
486
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS
BooTc X
think of the past, it seems like the inexorable law, from
which we can no more hope to be exempt than the young
man who '^feels his life in every limb^' can hope to be
exempt from the dissolution w'hich is the common fate
of all. ^'Even this, 0 Rome, must one day be thy fate!”
wept Scipio over the ruins of Carthage, and Macaulay’s
picture of the New Zealander musing upon the broken
arch of London Bridge appeals to the imagination of
even those who see cities rising in the wilderness and
help to Jay the foundations of new empire. And so,
when we erect a public building we make a hollow in
the largest comer stone and carefully seal within it some
mementos of our day, looking forward to the time when
our works shall be ruins and ourselves forgot.
Nor whether this alternate rise and fall of civiliza-
tion, this retrogression that always follows progression,
be, or be not, the rh3’-thmic movement of an ascending
line (and I think, though I will not open the question,
that it would be much more difficult to prove the affirma-
tive than is generally supposed) makes no difference;
for the current theory is in either case disproved. Civi-
lizations have died and made no sign, and hard-won
progress has been lost to the race forever; but, even if
it be admitted that each wave of progress has made
possible a higher wave and each civilization passed the
torch to a greater civilization, the theory that civiliza-
tion advances by changes wrought in the nature of man
fails to explain the facts; for in every case it is not the
race that has been educated and hereditarily modified
by the old civilization that begins the new, but a fresh
race coming from a lower level. It is the barbarians of
the one epoch who have been the civilized men of the
next; to be in their turn succeeded by fresh barbarians.
Eor it has been heretofore alwaj's the ease that men
under the influences of civilization, though at first im-
proving, afterward degenerate. The civilized man of to-
^P- J. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY
487
vastly the superior of the uncivilized; but so in
the time of its vigor vas the civilized man of every dead
civilization. But there are such things as the vices, the
corruptions, the "enervations of civilization, ■which past
^ certain point have always heretofore shown them-
selves. Every civilization that has been overwhelmed
^ ^^rtarians has really perished from internal decay,
this universal fact, the moment that it is recognized,
isposes of the theory that progress is by hereditary
ransmission. Looking over the history of the world,
e line of greatest advance does not coincide for any
^ngth of time with any line of heredity. On any par-
icular line of heredity, retrogression seems always to
advance.
bhall We therefore say that there is a national or race
^ as there is an individual life — that every social
^Sgregate has, as it were, a certain amount of energy,
old of which necessitates decay? This is an
fi ° widespread idea, that is yet largely held, and
. ^t may be constantly seen cropping out incongruously
^ the writings of the expounders of the development
P hosophy. Indeed, I do not see why it may not be
• (^ in terms of matter and. of motion so as to bring it
early the generalizations of evolution. For con-
„ ®ring its individuals as atoms, the growth of society is
mtegr’ation of matter and concomitant- dissipation
• Motion; during which the matter passes from an in-
mte, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent
_^®g6ueity, and during w'hich the retained motion,
an ^ parallel transformation.” * And thus ah
th^ D^ay be drawn between the life of a society and.
As ^ solar system upon the nebular hypothesis,
^he heat and, light of the sun are produced by the
p_ 3^^'^hert Spencer’s definition of Evolution, “First Principles/'’
488
THE LAW OF HUMAN PEOGEESS
Book Xt
^SS^Ggation of atoms evolving motion, which finally
ceases when the atoms at length come to a state of
squilibrium or rest, and a state of immobility succeeds,
which can be broken in again only by the impact of ex-
ternal forces, which reverse the process of evolution,
integrating motion and dissipating matter in the form
of gas, again to evolve motion by its condensation; so,
it may be said, does the aggregation of individuals in
a community evolve a force which produces the light
and warmth of civilization, but when this process ceases
and the individual components are brought into a state
of equilibrium, assuming their fixed places, petrifaction
ensues, and the breaking up and diffusion caused by an
incursion of barbarians is necessary to the recommence-
ment of the process arid a new ^owth of civilization.
But analogies are the most dangerous modes of
thought. They may connect resemblances and yet dis-
guise or cover up the truth.- And all such analogies are
superficial. While its members are constantly repro-
duced in all the fresh vigor of childhood, a community
cannot grow old, as does a man, by the decay of its
powers. While its aggregate force must be the sum of .
the forces of ‘its individual components, a community
cannot lose vital power unless the vital powers of its
components are lessened.
' Yet in both the common analogy which likens the life
power of a nation to that of an individual, and in the
one I have supposed, lurks the recognition of an obvious
truth— the truth that the obstacles which finally bring
progress to a halt are raised by the course of progress;
that what has destroyed all previous civilizations has
been the conditions produced by the growth of civiliza-
tion itself. , •
This is a truth which in the current philosophy is
ignored; but it is a truth most pregnant. _ Any valid
theory of human progress must account for it.
CHAPTER II
differences in CmiilZATlON — TO WHAT DTJE
In attempting to discover the law of human progress,
the first step must be to determine the essential nature
of these differences which we describe as differences in
civilization.
That the current philosophy, which attributes social
, progress to changes wrought in the nature of man, does
oot accord with historical facts, we have already seen,
^nd we may also see, if we consider them, that the dif-
jprences between communities in different stages of civi-
lization cannot be ascribed to innate differences in the
individuals who compose these communities. That there
nre natural differences is true, and that there is such a
tnmg as hereditary transmission of peculiarities is un-
doubtedly true; but the great differences between men
m different states of society cannot be explained in this
^ny. The influence of heredity, which it ■is now the
ashion to rate so highly, is as nothing compared with
oe influences which mold the man after he comes into
oe World. What is more ingrained in habit than lan-
^age, which becomes not merely an automatic trick
. ^^6 muscles, but the medium of thought? What per-
sists longer, or will quicker show nationality? Yet we
are not born with a predisposition to any language. Our
iQother tongue is, our mother tongue only because we •
aarned it in infancy. Although his ancestors have
. nought and spoken in one language for countless gen-
^rations, a child who hears from the first nothing else,
489
aau
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGEESS
Book X.
will learn with equal facility any other tongue. And so
of other national or local or class peculiarities. They
seem to be matters of education and habit, not of trans-
rnission. Cases of white children captured by Indians
in infancy and brought ujp in the wigwam show this.
They become thorough Indians. And so, I believe, with
children brought up by Gyp,sies.
That this is not so true of the children of Indians or
other distinctly marked races brought up by whites is, I
think, due to the fact that they are never treated pre-
cisely as white children. A gentleman who had taught
a colored school once told me that he thought the colored
children, up to the age of ten or twelve, were really
brighter and learned more readily than white children,
but that after that age they seemed to get dull and care-
less. He thought this proof of innate race inferiority,
and so did I a£ the time. But I afterward heard a
highly intelligent negro gentleman (Bishop Hillery). in-
cidentally make a remark which to my mind seems a
sufficient explanation. He said: /'Our children, when
they are young, are fully as bright as white children,
and learn as readily. But as soon as they get old enough
-to appreciate their status — ^to realize that they are looked
upon as belonging to an inferior race, and can never .
hope to be anything more than cooks, waiters, or some-
thing of that sort, they dose their ambition and cease
to keep up.'' And to this he might have added, that be-
ing the children of poor, uncultivated and unambitious
parents, home influences told against them. For, I be-
lieve it is a matter of common observation that in the
primary - part of education the children of ignorant
parents are quite as receptive as the children of intelli-
gent parents, but by and by the latter, as a general rule,
pull ahead and make the most intelligent men and
women. The reason is plain. As to the first simple
things which they learn only at school, they are on a
Ckap. n.
DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION
49]
par, but as tlicir studies become more complex, the
child who at home is accustomed to good English, hears
intelligent conversation, has access to books, can get
questions answered, cte., lias an advantage which tells.
The same thing rhay be seen later in life. Take a man
■^ho has raised himself from the ranks of common labor,
nnd just as he is brought into contact with men of cul-
and men of affairs, will he become more intelligent
2nd poli.shed. Take two brothers, the sons of poor par-
^ts, brought up in the same home and in the same way.
'^ne is put to a rude trade, and never gets beyond the
necessity of making a living by hard daily labor; the
ether, commencing as an errand boy, gets a start in an-
other direction, and becomes finally a successful lawyer,
^erchant, or politician. At forty or fifty the contrast
netween them will be striking, and the unreflecting will
to the greater natural ability w^hich has en-
abled the one to push himself ahead. But just as striking
2 difference in manners and intelligence will be mani-
csted between two sisters, one of w^hom, married to a
^2n wdio has remained poor, has her life fretted with
Petty cares and devoid of opportunities, and the other
t 'Whom has married a man w^hose subsequent position
her into cultured society and opens to her oppor-
^uities which refine taste and expand intelligence. And
20 deteriorations may be seen. Tliat “evil communica-
^ous corrupt good manners” is but an expression of the ,
general law that human character is profoundly modi-
by its conditions and surroundings.
-t remember once seeing, in a Brazilian seaport, a
dressed in what was an evident attempt at
® height of fashion, but without shoes and stockings,
e of the sailors with whom I was in company, and who
2a made some runs in' the slave trade, had a theory
2t a negro was not a man, but a sort of monkey, 'and
^ated to this as evidence in proof, contending that it
492
THE LAW OP HUMAN PROGRESS
Book X.
was not natural for a negro to wear shoes, and that in
his wild state he would wear no clothes at all. I after-
ward learned that it was not considered '%e thing’’
there for slaves to wear shoes, just as in England it is
not considered the thing for a faultlessly attired butler
to wear jewelry, though for that matter I have since
seen white men at liberty to dress as they pleased get
themselves up as incongruously as the Brazilian slave.
But a great many of the facts adduced as showing
hereditary transmission have really no more bearing
than this of our forecastle Darwinian. ,
That, for instance, a large number of criminals and
recipients of public relief in New York have been shown
to have descended from a pauper three or four genera-
tions back is extensively cited as showing hereditary
transmission. But it shows nothing of the kind, inas-
much as an adequate explanation of the facts is nearer.
Paupers will raise paupers, even if the children be not
their own, just as familiar contact with criminals will
make criminals of the' children of virtuous parents. To
learn to rely on charity is necessarily to lose the self-
respect and independence necessary for self-reliance
when the struggle is hard. So true is this that, as is
well known, charity has the effect of increasing the de-
mand for charity, and it is an open question whether
public relief and private alms do not in this way do far
more harm than good. And so of the disposition of
children to show the same feelings, tastes, prejudices, or
talents as their parents. They imbibe these dispositions
just as they imbibe from their habitual associates. And
the exceptions prove the rule, as dislikes or revulsions
may be excited.
And there is, I think, a subtler influence which often
accounts for what are looked upon as atavisms of char-
acter— the same influence that makes the boy who reads
dime novels want to be a- nirate. I once knew a gentle-
C?wp. IJ, DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION 493
roan in whose veins ran the blood of Jjidian chiefs. He
used to tell me traditions learned from his grandfather,
which illustrated what is difficult for a white man to
comprehend— the Indian habit of thought, the intense
but patient blood thirst of the trail, and the fortitude of
the stake. From the way in which he dwelt on these,
I have no doubt that under certain circumstances, highly
educated, civilized man that he was, he would have
shown traits which would have been looked on as due
to his Indian blood; but which in reality would have
been sufficiently explained by the broodings of his imagi-'
nation upon the deeds of his ancestors. *
In any large community we may see, as between differ^
cut classes and groups, differences of the same kind as
those which exist between communities which we speak
of as differing in civilization — differences of knowledge,
belief, customs, tastes, and speech, which in their ex-
tremes show among people of the same race, living in
the same country, differences almost as great as those
between civilized and savage communities. As all stages
of Social development, from the stone age up, are yet
to be found in contemporaneously existing communities,
®o in the same country^and* in the same-city are to be
found, side by side, groups which show similar diversi-
ties. Ijj such countries as England and Germany, chil-
dren of the same race, born and reared in the same place,
^11 grow up, speaking the language differently, holding
different beliefs, following different customs, and show-
^dg different tastes; and even in such a country as tho
Wordsworth, ia his “Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle/
das in highly poetical form alluded to this influence:
Armor rusting in his halls
On the blood of Clifford calls:
"Quell the Scot,” exclaims the lance;
“Bear me to the heart of France,”
Is the longing of the shield.
Book X,
the law of htjivian progress
United' States differences of the same kind^ though not
of the same degree, may be seen between different circles
or groups.
But these differences are certainly not innate. No
baby is born a Methodist or Catholic, to drop ite h’s qt
to sound them. All these differences which distinguish
different groups or circles are derived from association in
these circles.
The Janissaries were made up of youths torn from
Christian parents at an early age, but they were none the
less fanatical Moslems and none the less exhibited all
the Turkish traits; the Jesuits and other orders show
distinct character, but it is certainly not perpetuated by
hereditary transmissions; and even such associations as
schools or regiments, where the components remain but
a short time and are constantly changing, exhibit genera^
characteristics, which are the result of mental impres
sions perpetuated by association.
Now, it is this body of traditions, beliefs, customs
laws, habits, and associations, which arise in every com
munity and which surround every individual — ^thi
^‘super-organic environment/' as Herbert Spencer call
it, that, as I, take it, is the great element in-determininj
national character^- It is this, rather than hereditar}
transmission, which makes the Ehglishifaan differ from
the Frenchman, the German from the Italian, the Ameri-
can from the Chinaman, and the civilized man from the
savage man. It is in this way that national, traits are
preserved, extended, or altered.
Within certain limits, or, if you choose, without limits
in itself, hereditary transmission may develop or alter
qualities, but this is much more true of the physical
than of the mental part of a man, and much more true
of animals than it is even of the physical part of man.
Deductions from the breeding of pigeons or. cattle will
not apply to man, and the reason is clear. The life of
Chap. n.
DIFFERENCES IN CIYILIZATION
495
^an,.even in his rudest state, is infinitely more complex.
■He is constantly acted on by an infinitely greater number
of influences, amid which the relative influence of he-
redity becomes less and less. A race of men with no
greater mental activity than the animals — ^men who only
^te, drank, slept, .and propagated — might, I doubt not, by
oareful treatment and selection in breeding, be made, in
course of time, to exhibit as great diversities in bodily
nape and character as similar means have produced in
ne domestic animals. But there are no such men; and
|n men as they are, mental influences, acting through
m mind upon the body, would constantly interrupt the
process. You cannot fatten a man whose mind is on the
rain, by cooping him up and feeding him as you would
atten a pig. In all probability men have been upon
“c earth longer than many species of animals. They
^ve been separated from each other under differences
® climate that produce the most marked differences in
^mmals, and yet the physical differences between the
merent races of men are hardly greater than the differ-
.between white horses and black horses — ^they are
certainly nothing like as great as between dogs of the
®sme sub-species, ‘ as, for instance, the different varieties
the terrier or spaniel. And even these physical differ-
ences between races of men, it is held by those who
Account for them by natural selection and hereditary
ansmission, were "brought out when man was much
carer the animal — that is to 'say, when -he had less-
mind.
And if thig be true of the physical constitution of
n, in how much higher degree is it true of his mental
nstitution? All our physical parts we bring with us
c the , world ; but the mind develops afterward,
wt’ 1 is a stage in the growth of every organism in
cannot be toldj except by the environment,
, ether the animal that is to be will be fish or reptile,
496
THE LA.W OF HUMAN PEOGBESS
Book X
monkey or man. And so with the new-born infant;
whether the mind that is yet to awake to consciousness
and power is to be English or German, American or
Chinese — the mind of a civilized man or the mind of a
savage — depends entirely on the social environment in
which it is placed.
Take a number of infants bom of the most highly
civilized parents and transport them to an uninhabited
country. Suppose them in some miraculous way to be
sustained until they come of age to take care of them-
selves, and what would you have? More helpless sav-
ages than any we know of. They would have fire to
discover; the rudest tools and weapons to invent; lan-
guage to construct. They would, in short, have to
stumble their way to the simplest knowledge which the
lowest races now possess, just as a child leams to walk,
rhat they would in time do all these things I have not
the slightest doubt, for all these possibilities are latent
in the human mind just as the power of walking is
latent in the human frame, but I do not believe they
would do them any better or worse, any slower • or
quicker, than the children of barbarian parents placed
in the same conditions. Given the very highest mental
powers that exceptional individuals have ever displayed,
and what could mankind be if one generation were sepa-
rated from the next by an interval of time, as are the
seventeen-year locusts? One such interval would reduce
mankind, not to savagery, but to a condition compared
with which savagery, as we know it, would seem civili-
zation;
And, reversely, suppose a number of savage infants
could, unknown to the mothers, for even this wouM be
necessary to make the experiment a fair one, be substi-
tuted for as many children of civilization, can we sup-
pose that- growing up they would show any difference?
I think no one who has mixed much with different peo-
'5ap. II
DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION
497
pies and classes will think so. The great lesson that is
thus learned is that “human nature is human nature all
the world over.’’ And this lesson, too, may be learned
lu the librarJ^ I speak not so much of the accounts of
travelers, for the accounts given of savages by the civi-
lized men who write books are very often just such ac-
counts as savages would give of us did they make flying
Visits and then write books; but of those mementos of
the life and thoughts of other times and other peoples,
^hich, transiated into our language of to-day, are like
Sliuipses of our own lives and gleams of our own thought,
the feeling they inspire is that of the essential similarity
men. “This,” says Emanuel Deutsch — “this is the
Cud of all investigation into history or art. They were
cyen as we are.”
There is a people to be found in all parts of the
Jl'orld who well illustrate what peculiarities are due to
hereditary transmission and what to transmission by
association. The Jew’s have maintained the purity of
eir blood more scrupulously and for a far longer time
than
uny of the European races, yet I am inclined tti
to V characteristic that can be attributed
, his is that of physiognomy, and this is in reality far
- s marked than is conventionally supposed, as any
^ho will take the trouble may see on observation.
_ hough they have constantly married among them-
fi the Jews have everywhere been modified by
^err surroundings — the English, Russian, Polish,' Ger-
^u, and Oriental Jews differing from each other in
yespects as much as do the other people of those
utries. Yet they have much in common, and have
j ®^^^Irere preserved their individuality. The reason
p^car. It
is the Hebrew religion — and certainly re-
^.gion is not transmitted by generation, but by associa-
q£ has everywhere preserved the distinctiveness
.he Hebrew race. This religion, which • children de-
498
THE LAW OP HUMAN PROGRESS
Book X
rive, not as they derive their .physical characteristics,
but by precept and association, is not merely exclusive
in its teachings, but has,, by engendering suspicion and
dislike, produced a powerful outside pressure which,
even more than its precepts, has everywhere constituted
of the Jews a community within a community. Thus
nas been built up and maintained a certain peculiar en-
vironment which gives a distinctive character. Jewish
intermarriage has been the effect, not the cause of' this.
What persecution which stopped short of taking Jewish
children from their parents and bringing them up out-
side of this peculiar environment could not accomplish,
will be accomplished by the lessening intensity of re-
ligious belief, as is already evident in the United States,
where the distinction between Jew and Gentile is fast
disappearing. ' -
And it seems to me that the influence of this social
net or environment will explain what is so often taken as
proof of race differences — ^the difiiculty which less civi-
lized races show in receiving higher civilization, and the
manner in which some of them melt away before it.
Just as one social, environment persists, so does it ren-
der it difficult or impossible for those subject to it to
accept another.
The Chinese character is fixed if that of any people is.
Yet the Chinese in California acquire American modes
of working, trading, the use of machinery, etc., with
such "facility as to prove that they have no lack of -
flexibility, or. natural capacity. That they do not
change in other respects is due to the Chinese environ-
ment that still persists and still surrounds them. Com-
ing from China, they look forward to return to China;
and live while here in a little China of their own, just
as the Englishmen in India maintain a little England.
It is not merely that we naturally seek association w.th
those who share our peculiarities, and that thus language,
Ch^ap. 11.
DIFFERENCES IN CITILIZATION
499
religion and cugtcm tend to persist where individuals
3re not absolutely isolated; but that these differences
provoke an external pressure, which compels such asso-
ciation.
These obvious principles fully account for all the
phenomena which are seen in the meeting of one stage
or body of -culture with another, "without resort to the
theory of ingrained differences. For instance, as com-
parative philology has shown, the Hindoo is of the same
race as his English conqueror, and individual instances
have abundantly shown that if he could be placed com-
pletely and exclusively in the English environment
(i^’hich, as before stated, could be thoroughly done only
hy placing infants in English families in such a way that
Neither they, as they grow up, nor those around them,
^’ould be conscious of any distinction) one geneiation
^;ould be all required to thoroughly implant European
civilization. But the progress of English ideas and
habits in India must be necessarily very slow, because
they meet there the web of ideas and habits constantly
perpetuated through an immense population, and inter-
faced with every act of life.
^fr. Bagehot (“Physics and Politics”) endeavors to
®^lain the reason why barbarians waste away before
cur ci-vilization, -w^hile they did not before that of- the
jucients, by assuming that the progress of civilization
has given us tougher physical constitutions.. After a -
^V'liug to the fact that there is no lament in any das-
sical writer for the' barbarians, but that everywhere the
• harbarian endured the contact with the Roman and the
^oman allied ' himself to the barbarian, he says
(PP. 47-8) :
. Savages in the first year of the Christian era ’^^re prettj ,
touch -what they, were in the eighteen hundredth; and U they
Jood the contact of ancient civilized men and cannot,
curs, it follows that our race is presumably tougher than the
500
Boole X.
the law of human progress
ancient; for we have to bear, and do bear, the seeds of greater
diseases than the ancients carried with them. We may use.
perhaps, the unvaiying savage as a meter to gauge the vigor
of the constitution to whose contact he is exposed.”
^ Mr. Bagehot does not attempt to explain how it is that
eighteen hundred years ago civilization did not give the
like relative advantage over barbarism that it does how.
But there is no use of talking about that, or of the lack
of proof that the human constitution has been a whit
improved. To any one who has seen how the contact of
our civilization affects the inferior races, a much readier
though less flattering explanation will , occur.
It is not because our constitutions are naturally
tougher than those of the savage, that diseases which are
comparatively innocuous to us are certain death to him.
It is that we know and have the means of treating those
diseases, while he is destitute both of knowledge and
means. The same diseases with which the scum of civi-
lization that floats in its advance inoculates the savage
would prove as destructive to. civilized men, if they knetv
no better than to let them run, as he in his ignorance
has to let them run; and as a matter of fact they were as
destructive, until we found out how to. treat them. And
not merely this, but the effect of the impingement of
civilization upon barbarism is to weaken the power of
the savage without bringing him into the conditions that
give power to the civilized man. While his habits and
customs still tend to persist, and do persist as far as they
can,' the conditions to which they were adapted are forci-
bly changed. He is a hunter in a land stripped of game;
a warrior deprived of his arms and called on to plead in
legal technicalities. He is not merely placed between
cultures, but, as Mr. Bagehot says of the European half-
breeds in India, he is placed between moralities, and
learns the vices of civilization without its virtues. He
loses -his accustomed means of subsistence, he loses self-'
501
Chap. II. differences IN CIVILIZATION
respect, he loses morality, he deteriorates and dies away.
The miserable creatures who may be seen hanging
sround frontier towns or railroad stations, ready to eg,
or steal, or solicit a viler commerce, are not fair repre-
sentatives of the Indian bef9re the white man had en-
croached upon his hunting grounds. They have lost ^ e
strength and virtues of their former state, without gam-
ing those of a higher. In fact, civilization, as it pushes
the red man, shows no virtues. To the Anglo-Saxon o
the frontier, as a rule, the aborigine has no rights which
the white man is bound to respect. He is impoverished,
misunderstood, cheated, and abused. He dies
nnder similar conditions, we should die out. He Uisa,p-
Pears before civilization as the Romanized Britons dis-
appeared before Saxon barbarism. _ .
■ The true reason why there is no lament in sny ^ ^ssic
Writer for the barbarian, but that the Roman civilization
assimilated instead of destroying, is, I take it, to be
^opnd not only in the. fact that the ancient civilization
^as much nearer akin to the barbarians which it met, but
m the more important fact that it was not extended as
ours has been. It was carried forward, not by an ad-
vancing line of colonists, but by conquest which merely
reduced the new province to general subjection, reaving
^he social, and generally the political organization pf tbe
People to a great degree unimpaired, so that, without
shattering or deterioration, the process of _ assimilation
on. In a somewhat similar way the civilization ot
apan seems to be now assimilating itself to European
mobilization. ' '
lu America the Anglo-Saxon has exterminated, in-
stead of civilizing, the Indian, simply because he has not
wrought the Indian into his environment, nor yet has the
contact been in such a way as to induce or penmt
Indian web of habitual thought and custom to be
changed rapidly enough to meet the new conditions into
502
THE LAW OE HITMAN PROGRESS
BookX.
which he has been brought by the proximity of new and
powerful neighbors. That there is no innate impedi-
ment to the reception of .our civilization by these un-
civilized races has been shown over and over again in
individual cases. And it has likewise been shovm, so far
as the experiments have been permitted to go, by the
Jesuits in Paraguay, the Franciscans in California, and
the Protestant missionaries on some of the Pacific
islands.
The assumption of physical improvement in the race
within any time of which we have knowledge is utterly
without warrant, and within the time of which Mr.
Bagehot speaks, it is absolutely disproved. We know'
from classic statues, from the burdens carried and the
marches made by ancient soldiers, from the records of
runners and the feats of gymnasts, that neither in pro-
portions nor strength has the race improved within two
thousand years. But the assumption of mental improve-
ment, which is even more con^dently and generally
made, is still more preposterous. As poets, artists
.architects,, philosophers, rhetoricians, statesmen, or sol-
diers, can modern civilization show individuals of greatei
mental power than can the ancient? There is no use
in recalling names — every schoolboy knows them. For
nur models and personifications of mental power we go
back to the ancients, and if we can for a moment
imagine the possibility of what is held by that oldest and
most widespread of all beliefs — that belief which Less-
ing, declared on this account the most probably true,
though he accepted it on metaphysical grounds — and
suppose Homer or Virgil, Demosthenes or Cicero, Alex-
ander, Hannibal or Caesar, Plato or Lucretius, Euclid
or Aristotle, as re-entering this life again in the Nine-
teenth Century, can we suppose that they would show
any inferiority to the men of to-day? Or if we take
any period since the classic age^ even the darkest, or any
Chap. 31. ' DIFFEBENCES IN CIVIEIZATION 503
previous period of wbicli we know
not find men who in the conditions and degree of
knowledge of their times showed mental
iiigh an order.as men show now? And a^ong ^
advanced races' do we not ponditiona
iion is called to them, find men who m ^
exhibit mental qualities as great as ci when
show? Did the invention of the railroad, com g
it did, prove any greater inventive P°^®h, g
invention of the wheelbarrow when ^heelba
not? We of modern civilization ^e rai
those who have oreceded us and those o
vanced races who' are our .rp taller.
because we stand on a pyramid, not _ ^ increase
"h^hat the centuries have done for us is ^^ich we
Pnr stature, but to build up a structure on which we
may plant our feet. , ^ *11 vnen
Let me-repeat:' I do not mean to ®
possess the same capacities, or are men ^ ni alike.
more than I mean to say ^^ave come and
Among all the countless millions wh
gone on tins earth, there were counterparts,
mther physically or mentally ^ot as clearly
^or yet do I mean to say that the clearly
marked race , differences in mind as
marked race differences in body. liorities of mind
mhuence of heredity in transmitting P®®^ degree as
m the same way, and P°®i“y to the same^de^ee.j^^^
bodily peculiarities are transmitted. -natural
‘h®e is, it seems to me, a common standaid and
- symmetry of mind, as there is of body, toward
^11 deviations tend to return. The conditions^imd^
ybich we fall may produce such distortions a ^ j^j^nts'
^oads produce by compressing the hea ® ^ ^
the Chinese by binding their ./^ttiirally
Flathead .babies continue to be born wit
504
THE LAW OP HTOIAK PEOGEESS
Book X
shaped heads and Chinese babies with naturally shaped
feet, so does nature seem to revert to the normal mental
type. child no more inherits his father’s knowledge
than he inherits his father’s glass eye or artificial leg;
the child of the most ignorant parents may become a
pioneer of science or a leader of thought.
But this is the great fact with which we are concerned:
That the dilferences between the people of communi-
ties in different places and at different times, which
we call differences of civilization, are not differences
which inhere in the individuals, but differences which
inhere in the society; that they are not, as Herbert
Spencer holds, differences resulting from differences in
the units; but that they are differences resulting from
the conditions under which these units are brought
in the society, 'In short, I take the explanation of the
differences which distinguish communities to be this;
That each society, small or great, necessarily weaves for
itself a web of knowledge, beliefs, customs, . language,
tastes, institutions, and laws. Into this web, woven by
each society, or rather, into these webs, for each com-
munity above the simplest is made up of minor societies,
which overlap and interlace each other, the individual
is received at birth and continues until his death. This
is the matrix in which mind unfolds and from which it
takes its stamp. This is the way in which customs, and
religions, and prejudices, and tastes, and languages,
grow up and are perpetuated. This is the way that
skill is transmitted and knowledge is stored up, and the
discoveries of one time made the common stock and
stepping stone of the next. Though it is this that often
offers the most serious obstacles to progress, it is this
that makes progress possible. It is this that enables any
schoolboy in our time to leam in a few hours more of
the universe than Ptolemy knew; that places the most
humdrum scientist far above the level reached by the
Chap. II DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION
giant mind of Aristotle. This is to the race what mem-
ory is to the individual. Our wonderful arts, our tar-
leaching science, our marvelous inventions ^they nave
come through this. , ,
Human progress goes on as the advances ma e y o
generation are in this way secured as the common
crty ol the next, and made the starting pom or ne
advances. -
CHAPTER III
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS
What, then, is the law of human progress — ^the law
under which civilization advances?
It must explain' clearly and definitely, and not by
vague generalities or superficial analogies, why, though
mankind started presumably with the same capacities
and at the same time, there now exist such wide differ-
ences in social development. It must account for the
arrested civilizations and for the decayed and destroyed
civilizations; for the general facts as to the rise of civili-
zation, and for the petrifying or enervating force which
the progress of civilization has heretofore always
evolved. It must account for retrogression as well as for
progression; for the differences in general character
between Asiatic and European civilizations; for the
difference between classical and modern civilizations;
for the different rates at which progress goes on; and for
those bursts, and starts, and halts of progress which are
so marked as minor phenomena. And, thus, it must
show us what are the essential conditions of progress,
and what social adjustments advance and what retard it.
It is not difficult to discover such a law. We have but
to look and- we may see it, I do not pretend to give it
scientific precisiop, but merely to point it out, .
The incentives to progress are the desires inherent in-
human nature — the desire to gratify the wants of the
animal nature, the wants of the intellectual nature, and
the wants of the sympathetic nature; the desire to be,
506
507
THE LAW OE HUMAN PROGRESS
now, and to do — desires that short of infinity can
A- by what they feed oru
Mind is the instrument by which man advances, and
y which each advance is secured and made the vantage-
p’ound for new advances. Though he may not by tak-
og thought add a cubit to his stature, man may by
^bought extend his knowledge of the universe
n his power over it, in what, so far as we can see, is
n infinite - degree. The narrow span of human life
th individual to go but a short distance, but
ough each generation may do but little, yet genera-
ons, succeeding to the gain of their predecessors, may
gradually elevate the status of mankind, as coral polyps,
1 ding one generation upon the work of the other,
gradually elevate themselves from the bottom of the
RPo-.
Mental power is, therefore, the motor of progress, and
advance in proportion to the mental power
^pended in progression — ^the mental power which is de-
6d to the extension pf knowledge, the improvement
^ethods, and the betterment of social conditions.
^®rital power is a fixed quantity — ^that is to say,
' a bmit to the work .a man can do with his mind,
for work he can do with his body; there-
is ^ ^®rrfal power which can be devoted to progress
r\v ^ what is left after what is required for non-
P passive purposes.
'T'hese
non-progressive purposes in which mental power
may be classified as maintenance and con-
g naaintenance I mean, not only the support of
fhe keeping up of the social condition and
nolding of advances already gained. By conflict I
merely warfare and preparation for warfare,
ficar ^ ®^®iiditure of mental power in seeking the grati-
g of desire at the expense of others, and in resist-
0 to such aggression.
508
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS
Book X.
To compare society to a boat. Her progress through
the water will not depend upon the exertion of her crew,
but upon the exertion devoted to propelling her. This
will be^ lessened by any expenditure of force required
for bailing, or any expenditure of force in fighting among
themselves, or in pulling in different directions.
Now, as in a separated state the whole powers of man
are required to maintain existence, and mental power is
set free for higher uses only by the association of men
in communities, which permits the division of labor and
all the economies which come with the co-operation
of increased numbers, association is the first essential of
progress. Improvement becomes possible as men come
together in peaceful association, and the wider and closer
the association, the greater the possibilities of improve-
ment. And as the wasteful expenditure of mental power
m conflict becomes greater or less as the moral law which .
••accords to each an equality of rights is ignored or is
■■recognized, equality (or justice) is the second essential
of progress.
Thus association in equality is the law of progress.
Association frees mental power for expenditure in im-
provement, and equality, or justice, or freedom — for the
terms here signify the same thing, the recognition of the
moral law — ^prevents the dissipation of this power in
fruitless struggles. „ • n
Here is the law of progress, which will explain all
diversities, all advances, all halts, and retrogressions.
Men tend to progress just as^they come closer together,
and by co-operation with each other increase the men-
tal power that may be devoted to _ improvement, but
just as conflict is, provoked, or ' association develops in-
equality of condition and power, this tendency to pro-
gression is lessened, checked, and finally reversed.
Given the same innate capacity, and it is evident tiiac
social development will go on faster or slower, will stop
CJwp. in. THE LAW OF HUMAN PBOGBESS
or turn baclt, according to the resistances it meets In
a general way these obstacles to impruvemen nicy,
relation to the society itself, be classed as ex erna
internal— the first operating with greater ^^rce in t
earlier stages of civilization, the latter becoming
important in the later stages. . ,
Man is social in his nature. He does not require to
be caught and tamed in order to induce him o .
his fellows. The utter helplessness with which b ^ e_
the world, and the long period required for the mat y
of his powers, necessitate the family re a ion, ’
we may observe, is wider, and in its ®
among the ruder than among the more cu . ,
Pies. The first societies are families Tn “d even
tribes, still holding a mutual blood relationship, an
when they have become great nations claimi g
^'aiven beings of this kind, placed on a globe of such
diversified surface and climate as this, an c^ocial
that, even with equal capacity, and an limit or
development must be very different. ^ ® onnditions
resistance to association will come from local-
of physical nature, and as these greatly • must
%, corresponding differences in socia Pr S
^how talves. The net rapidity of
closeness with which men, as they mcrease, ^rhich
gether, will, in the rude state of knowledge m vhich
reliance for subsistence must be J, depend
spontaneous offerings of nature, very g
upon climate, soil, and physical conformation.
uiuch animal food and warm clothing ^re r q
where the earth seems poor and niggar > man's
exuberant life of tropical forests mocks ar ^
puny efforts to control; where mountains,
«rms of the sea separate and isolate men; associatm^^
^ud the power of improvement which it evolv s,
510
Book X,
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS
go but a little way. But on the rich plains of warm
climates, where human existence can be maintained with
a smaller expenditure of force, and from a much sroaller
area, men can keep closer together, and the mental
power which can at first be devoted to improvement is
much greater. Hence civilization naturally first arises
in the great valleys and table lands where we find its
earliest monuments.
But these diversities in natural conditions, not merely
thus directly produce diversities in social development,
but, by producing diversities in social development, bring
out in man himself an obstacle, or rather an active coun-
terforce, to improvement. As families and tribes are
separated from each other, the social feeling ceases to
operate between them, and differences arise 'in language,
custom, tradition, religion — in short, in the whole social
web which each community, however small or large, con-
stantly spins. With these differences, prejudices grow,
animosities spring up, contact easily produces quarrels,
aggression begets aggression, and wrong kindles re-
venge,* And so between these separate social aggregates
arises the feeling of Ishmael and the spirit of Cain, war-
* How easy it is for ignorance to. pass into contempt and dis-
like; how natural it is for us to consider any difference in
manners, customs, religion, etc-., as proof of the inferiority of
those who differ from us, any one who has emancipated him-
self in any degree from prejudice, and who mixes with different
classes, may see in civilized society. In religion, for instance,
the spirit of the hymn—
“I’d rather be a Baptist, and wear a shining face,
Than for to be a Methodist and always fall from grace,”
is observable in all denominations. As the English Bishop
said, “Orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodo^ is any other
doxy,” while the universal tendency is to classify all outside of
the orthodoxies and heterodoxies of the prevailing religion as
heathens or atheists. And the like tendency is observable as
to all other differences.
Ckav- in.
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS
511
fare becomes the chronic and seemingly natural relation
of societies to each other, and the powers of men are ex-
pended in attack or defense, in mutual slaughter and
mutual destruction of wealth, or in warlike preparations.
How long this hostility persists, the protective tariffs
and the standing armies of the civilized world to-day
bear witness; how difficult it is to get over the idea that
it is not theft to steal from a foreigner, the diflBculty in
procuring an international copyright act will show. Can
wonder. at the perpetual hostilities of tribes and clans?
Can we wonder that when each community was isolated
from the others — ^when each, uninfluenced by the others,
^as spinning its separate "web of social environment,
^hich no individual can escape, that war should have
been the rule and peace the exception? “They were
oven as we are.”
Now, warfare is the negation of association. The
separation of men into diverse tribes, by increasing war-
fare, thus checks improvement; while in the localities
■^here a large increase in numbers is possible without
^uch separation, civilization gains the advantage of ex-
omption from tribal war, even w^hen the community as a
v^hole is carrying on warfare beyond its borders. Thus,
^bere the resistance of nature to the close association of
is slightest, the counterforce of warfare is likely at
first to be least felt; and in the rich plains where
Nation first begins, it may rise to a great height while
Scattered' tribes are yet barbarous. And thus, when
Small, separated communities exist in a state of chronic
^arfare which forbids advance, the first step to their
mvilization is the advent of some conquering tribe or
Ration that’ unites .these smaller communities into a
mrgei- which internal peace is preserved. Where
mis power of peaceable association is broken up, eit er
by external assaults or internal dissensions, the advance
teases and retrogression begins.
512
Books,
THE LAW OP HUMAN. PROGEESS
But it is not conquest alone that has operated to pro-
mote association, and, by liberating mental power from
the necessities of warfare, to promote civilization. If
the diversities of climate, soil, and configuration of the
earth’s surface operate at first to separate mankind, they
also operate to encourage' exchange. And commerce,
which is in itself a form of association or co-operation,
operates to promote civilization, ' not only directly, but
by building up interests which are opposed to warfare,
and dispelling the ignorance which is the fertile mother
of prejudices and animosities.
And so of religion. Though the forms it has assumed
and the animosities it has aroused have often sundered
men and produced warfare, yet it has at other times been
the means of promoting association. A common wor-
ship has often, as among the Greeks, mitigated war and
furnished the basis of union, while it is from the triumph
of Christianity over the barbarians of Europe that mod-
ern civilization springs. Had not the Christian Church
existed when the Roman Empire went to pieces, Europe,
destitute of any bond of association, might have fallen
to a condition not much above that of the North Ameri-
' can Indians or only received civilization with an Asiatic
impress from the conquering scimiters of the invading
hordes whiph had been welded into a mighty power by a
religion which, springing up in the deserts of Arabia,
had united tribes separated from time immemorial, and,
thence issuing, brought into the association of a common
faith a great part of the human race.
Looking over what we know of the history of the
world, we thus see civilization everywhere springing up
where men are brought into association, and everywhere
disappearing as this association is broken up. Thus the
Roman civilization, spread over Europe by the conquests
which insured internal peace, was overwhelmed by the
incursions of the northern nations that broke society
///. THE lAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 513
again into disconnected fragments; and tlie progress that
now’ goes on in our modern civilization began as the
feudal system again began to associate men in larger
communities, and the s]Mritual supremacy of Rome to
bring these communities into a common relation, as her
legions had done before. As the feudal bond • grew into
national autonomies, and Christianity worked the amel-
ioration of manners, brought forth the knowledge that
during the dark days she had hidden, bound the threads
of peaceful union in her all-pervading organization, and
tsught association in her religious orders, a greater prog-
ress became possible, which, as men have been brought
into closer and closer association and co-operation, has
gone on with greater and greater force.
But we shall never understand the course of civiliza-
tion, and the varied phenomena which its history pre-
sents, without a consideration of what I may term the
internal resistances, or counter forces, which arise in the
heart of advancing society, and which can alone explain
how a civilization once fairly started should either come
of itself to a halt or be destroyed by barbarians.
"Bhe mental power, which is the motor of social prog-
ress, is set free by association, which is, what, perhaps,
jt may be more properly called, an integration. Society
In this process becomes more complex; its individuals
more dependent upon each other. Occupations and
functions are specialized. Instead of wandering, popu-
lation becomes fixed. Instead of each man attempting
^0' supply all of his wants, the various trades and indus-
f'ries are separated — one man acquires skill in one thing,
nnd another in another thing. So, too, of knowledge,
fhe body of which constantly tends to become vaster than
^ue man can grasp, and is separated into different parts,
^hich different individuals acquire and pursue. So, too,
he performance of religious ceremonies tends to pasa
^uto the hands of a body of men specially devoted to that
514
THE LAW OP HUMAN PROGRESS
Book X
purpose, ^ and the preserv^ation of order, the administra-
tion of justice, the assignment of public duties and the
distribution of awards, the conduct of war, etc,, to be
made the special functions of an organized government.
In short, to use the language in which Herbert Spencer
has defined evolution, the development of society is, -in
relation to its component individuals, the passing from
an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite,
coherent heterogeneity. The lower the stage of social
development, the more society resembles one of those
lowest of animal organisms which are without organs or
limbs, and from which a part may be cut and yet live.
The higher the stage of social development, the more
society resembles those higher organisms in which func-
tions and powers are specialized, and each member is
vitally dependent on the others.
' Now, this process of integration, of the specialization
of functions and powers, as it goes on in society, is, by
virtue of what is probably one of the deepest laws of
human nature, accompanied by a constant liability to
inequality, I do not mean that inequality is the neces-
sary result of social growth, but that it is' the constant
tendency of social growth if unaccompanied by changes
in social adjustments which, in the new conditions that
growth produces, vdll secure equality. I mean, so to
speak, that the garment of laws, customs, and political
institutions, which each society weaves for itself, is con-
stantly tending to become too tight -as the society de-
velops. I mean, so to speak, that man,' as he advances,
threads a labyrinth, in which, Af he keeps straight ahead,
he will Infallibly lose his way, and through which reason
and justice can alobe keep him continuously in an as-
cending path. . '
For, while the integration which accompanies growtn
tends in itself to set free mental power to work improve-
ment, there is, both with increase of numbers and with
Ckap. m, THE LAW OF HUMAN PEOGRESS
515
increase in complexity of the social organization, a coun-
ter tendency set up to the production of a state o in-
equality, which wastes mental power, and, as it increases,
brings improvement to a halt. i,- u +1,
To trace to its highest expression the law which thus
operates to evolve with progress the force which stops
progress, would be, it seems to me, to go far to the ^lu-
tion of a problem deeper than that of the genesis 0 e
material universe — the problem of the genesis 0 evi .
Let me content myself with pointing out the rnanner in
which, as society develops, there arise tendencies which
check development. , . , ..
There are two qualities of human nature which it will
he well, however, to first call to mind. The one is the
power of habit^the tendency to continue to do things
ih the same way; the other is the possibi 1 y o ^ ^
and moral deterioration. The effect of the first in social
development is to continue habits, customs, laws, anci
methods, long after they have lost their oripnal u “
^essj and the effect of the other is to permit the growt
of institutions' and modes of thought from w ic
normal perceptions of men instinctively reyo . ^ ■
Now the growth ■ and development of society not
- merely tend to-make each more and "
opon all, and to lessen the influence of ™diyi ua >
over their own conditions, as compared with the lic -
ence of society; but the effect of association or in
tion is to give rise to a collective power whidi m
distinguishable -from 'the sum of P
fu'alogies, or, perhaps, rather illustrations of the same
iaw, may be found in all directions. As animal org
^sms increase in complexity, there arise, above tim me
power of the parts, a life and power of the in »
]?hole; above the capability of mvoluntary movement,
^be capability of voluntary movements ^he _
snd impulses of bodies of men are, as has o
516
THE LAW OF HUMAN PEOGRESS
BookX,
observed, different from those which, under the same
circumstances, would be called forth in individuals. The
fighting qualities of a regiment may be very different
from those of the individual soldiers. But there is no
need of illustrations. In our inquiries into the nature
and rise of rent, we traced the very thing to which I
allude. Where population is sparse, land has no value;
just as men congregate together, the value of land ap-
pears and rises — a clearly distinguishable thing from
the values produced by individual effort; a value which
springs from association, which increases as association
grows greater, and disappears as association is broken
up. And the same thing is true of power in other forms
than those generally expressed in terms of wealth.
Now, as society grows, the disposition to continue
previous social adjustments tends to lodge this collective
power, as it arises, in the hands of a portion of the com-
munity; and this unequal distribution of the wealth and
power gained as society advances tends to produce
greater inequality, since aggression grows by what it
feeds on, and the idea of justice is blurred by the
habitual toleration of injustice.
In this way the patriarchal organization of society
can easily grow into hereditary monarchy,, in which the
king is as a god on earth, and the masses of the people
mere slaves of his caprice. It is natural that the father
should be the directing head of the family,' and that at
his death the eldest son, as the oldest and most experi-
enced member of the little community, should succeed
to the headship. But to continue this arrangement as
the family expands, is to lodge power in a particular
line, and the power thus lodged necessarily continues to
increase, as the common stock becomes larger and larger,
and the power of the community grows. The head of
the family passes into the hereditary king, who comes
to look upon himself and to be looked upon by others
Oa,. m. . THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGEBSS 517
as a being, of superior rights. to-
collective power as compared with t e po ceases
dividual, his power to reward and o pun
and so increase the inducements to ^ , i j ^ jja-
him; until finally, if the process be not disturbed ^
tion grovels at the foot of a throne, an , u ^qj.
tliouslnd men toil for fifty years to prepare a to
one of their own mortal kind. hnt one
So the war-chief of a IMe band of
of their number, whom they follow as tosether
most wary. But when large bodies oo^ blinder
personal selection becomes more
obedience becomes necessary and can „„j„cted on
from the -very necessities of warfare when conducted on
a large scale absolute power arises, /rVipre is a
And so of the specialisation of
manifest gain in productive 'producer being
fias gone so far that instead of e ry P reeu-
summoned from his work +his inevitably
lar military force can be specialized, •hands of the
tends to the concentration of power “
military class or their chiefs, ^he P construc-
ternal order, the administration of 3ustice, ^ ^
. tion and care of public works, to
observances of religion all ®g™Vhose disposi-
pass into the hands of special da , ^^eir
tion it is to magnify their function
--uupoiy wnicn is giv«u . .^hat land if
first perceptions of men seem alway ^hich this is
common property; but the rude „ cultiva-
at first re"cog"nized-sucli - sC of
tion in common — are consistent with . naturally
development. The idea of P’^^Pf y- „:'’ltduction, is
irises with reference to things of hu
518
THE LAW OF HITMAls'.PKOGRBSS
Boo
easily transferred to land, and an institution which wl
population is sparse merely secures to the improver s
user the due reward of his labor, finally, as populati
becomes dense and rent arises, operates to strip the p
ducer of his wages. Not merely this, but the appropr:
tion of rent for public purposes, which is the only w
in which, with anything like a high development, la:
can be readily retained as common property, becom<
when political and religious power passes into the han
of a class, the ownership of the land by that class, ai
the rest of the community become merely tenants.- Ai
wars and conquests, which tend to the concentration i
political power and to the institution of slavery, nati
rally result, where social growth has given land a valu
in the appropriation of the soil. A dominant, class, wh
concentrate power in their hands, will likewise soon con
centrate ownership of the land. To them will fall larg
partitions of conquered land, which the former inhabi
tants will till as tenants or serfs, and the public domain
or common lands, which in the natural course of socia
growth are left for awhile in every country, and in whicl
state the primitive system of village culture leaves pas-
ture and woodland, are, readily acquired, as we see by
modern instances. And inequality once established, the
ownership of land tends to concentrate as development
goes on.
I am merely attempting to set forth the general fact
that as a social development goes on, inequality tends
to establish itself, and not to point out the particular
sequence, which must necessarily vary with different con-
ditions. But this main fact makes intelligible all the
phenomena of petrifaction and retrogression. The un-
equal distribution of the. power and wealth gained by the
integration of men in society- tends to check, and finally
■to counterbalance, the force by which improvements are
made and society advances. On the one side, the masses
of the community are compelled to expend their mental
Chap. III. THE LATV OF HIJTiIAN PROGRESS
519
powers in merely maintaining existence. On the other
side, mental power is expended in keeping up and inten-
sifying the system of inequality, in ostentation,
and warfare. A community divided into a class that
rules and a class that is ruled-into the very rich and
the very poor, may “build like giants and finish liKe
jewelers;” but it wdll be monuments of ruthless pnde
and barren vanity, or of a religion turned from its o ce
of elevating man into an instrument for keeping iina
down. Invention may for awhile to some degree go on;
but it will be the invention of refinements m luxury,
uot the inventions that relieve toil, and increase
In the arcana of temples or in the chambers o
physicians knowledge may still be sought; but it will
hidden as a secret thing, or if it dares come out to ele-
"'^ate common thought or brighten common life, i wi e
hodden down as a dangerous innovator. ^ For as i ®
tc lessen the mental power devoted to improvemen , so
does inequality .tend to render men adverse to improv -
®ent. How strong is the . disposition to a lere o o
niethods among the classes who are kept in ignorance y
being compelled to toil for a mere existence, boo we i
■known to require illustration; and on tlie obh^r.^and th
.conservatisih of the classes to whorn the existing
adjustment gives special advantages is equa y a^are .
This .tendency to resist innovation, even oug ^
^provementj is observable in every special organiza
-in religion, in law, in medicine, in science, in brade
guilds; and it becomes intense just as the
IS close. A close corporation has always an pn® i ,
dislike of innovation and innovators, which is
expression of an instinctive fear that change may
bhrow down the barriers which hedge it m ro
common herd, and so rob it of importance an P '
^ud it is always disposed to guard carefu y i P
knowledge or 'skill.
Ib is in this way that petrifaction succeeds progress.
520
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS
Book X.
The advance of inequality necessarily brings improve-
ment to a halt, and as it still persists or provokes-'
unavailing reactions, draws even upon the mental power-
necessary for maintenance, and retrogression begins.
These principles make intelligible the history of civili-
zation.
In the localities w’^here climate, soil, and physical con-
formation tended least to separate men as they increased,
and where, accordingly, the first civilizations grew up,
the internal resistances to progress would naturally
develop in a more regular and thorough manner than
where smaller communities, which in their separation
had developed diversities, were afterward brought to-
gether into a closer association. It is this, it seems to
me, which accounts for the general characteristics of the
earlier civilizations as compared with the later civiliza*
tions of Europe. Such homogeneous communities, de- •
veloping from the first -without the jar of conflict be-
tween different customs, laws, religions, etc., would show
a much greater uniformity. The concentrating and con-
servative forces would all, so to speak, pull together..
Rival chieftains would not counterbalance each other,
nor diversities of belief hold the growth of priestly in-
fluence in check. Political and religious power, wealth
and knowledge, -would thus tend to concentrate in the
same centers. ITie same causes which tended to pro-
duce the hereditary king and hereditary priest would
tend to produce the hereditary artisan and laborer, and
to separate society into castes. The power which as-
sociation sets free for progi-ess- would thus be wasted,
and barriers to further progress be gradually raised.
The surplus energies of the masses would be devoted ta
the construction of temples, palaces, and pj^ramids;
to ministering to the pride and pampering the luxury of
their rulers; and should any disposition to improvement
arise among the classes of leisure it -would at once be
521
Chav. III. the law op HUMAN PROGRESS
checked by the dread of innovation. _
ing in this way must at length stop m a conservatism
which permits no further progress. j.-f5,pf;nn when
How long such a state of complete P^^rdac"^^^
'Once reached, will continue, seems o ^ , g^viron-
ternal causes, for the iron ^egrating forces as
ment which grows up repress be most
W1 as improvement. Such a are trained
easily conquered, for the ^ P ^ss labor. If
to a passive acquiescence m a lile V
the conquerors merely take the pla - Qbina,
as the Hyksos did in B^pt and de-
everythmg will go on as before J remains but in
stroy, the glory of palace and tempi
mins, papulation becomes sparse,
"Eropet civilisation diSers in ch-acto feom
hens of the Eg>Ttian type developing
the association of a homogeneo P, under
from the beginning, or at least of peoples
the same conditions, but from social char-
^ho m- separation had acquired . „ longer pre-
aeteristics, and w^hose smaller organ ^rg^ffb in one
’^'ented the concentration of powe Precian penin-
contcr. The physical cenformatmn of lAm Gremn ^n ^
«iila is such as to separate the P P republics
laimber of small communities. As ? . energies in
aad nominal kingdoms ceased to . f commerce,
'varfare, and the peaceable oo-°PO«‘ “ ““ i the
extended, the light of “"’'teation enough to save
principle of association was never s ° .
flroece from inter-tribal war, and w i . ^ty which
end to by conquest, the tendency ° . w' Grecian
had been combated 'with various Grecian
bilges and statesmen, worked its ' f past,
viilor, art, and literature became things ot P
622
THE LAW OP HITMAN PEOGRESS
BookX.
And so in the rise and extension, the decline and fall,
of Roman civilization, may be seen the working of these
two principles of association and equality, from the
combination of which springs progress.
Springing from the association of the independent
husbandmen and free citizens of Italy, and gaining fresh
strength from conquests which brought hostile nations
into common relations, the Roman power hushed the
wmrid in peace. But the tendency to inequality, check-
ing real progress from the first, increased as the Roman
civilization extended. The Roman civilization did' not
petrify as did the homogeneous civilizations w^here the
strong bonds of custom and superstition that held the
people in subjection probably also protected them, or at ,
any rate kept the peace between rulers and ruled; it
rotted, declined and fell. Long before Goth or Vandal
had broken through the cordon of the legions, even while
her frontiers were advancing, Rome was dead at the,
heart. Great estates had ruined Italy. Inequality had
dried up the strength and destroyed the idgor of the
Roman world. Government became despotism, which
even assassination could not temper; patriotism became
servility; vices the most foul flouted themselves in pub-
lic; literature sank 'to puerilities; learning was forgotten;
fertile districts became waste without the ravages of war
. — everywhere inequality produced decay, political, men-
tal, moral, and material. The barbarism which over-
whelmed Rome came not from without, but from within.
It was the necessary product of the system which had
substituted slaves and colonii for the independent hus-
bandmen of Italy, and carved the provinces into estates
of senatorial families. - - ^
Modern civilization owes its superiority to the growth,
of equality with the growth of association. Two great
causes contributed to -this — ^the splitting up of concen-
trated power into innumerable little centers by the in-
Chap. in.
523
THE LAW OF HUSIAN PKOGRESS
flux of the Northern nations, and the influence of
Christianity. Without the first there would have been
the petrifaction and slow decay of the Eastern Empire,
'i'’here church and state were closely married and loss of
external power brought no relief of internal tyranny.
And hut for the other there would have been barbarism,
"tvithout principle of association or amelioration. The
petty chiefs and allodial lords who everywhere grasped
local sovereignty held each other in check. Italian
cities recovered their ancient liberty, free towns were
founded, village communities took root, and serfs ac-
quired .rights in the soil they tilled. The' leaven oi
Teutonic ideas of equality worked through the disorgan-
ized and disjointed fabric of society. And amioug
society was split up into an innumerable number ot
separated fragments, -yet the idea of closer aDSOCia ion
always present — it- existed in the recollections of a
^iversal empire; it existed in the claims of a universal
church. ' ' • . • ,
Though Christianity became distorted and alloyed m
percolating through a rotting civilization ; though pagan
gods Were taken into her pantheon, and pagan orms
into her ritual, and pagan ideas into her creed, ye
^er essential idea of the equality of men was never
^flqlly destroyed. And two things_ happened of the
htuiost moment to incipient civilization^ ^the esta ^
^ent of the papacy and the celibacy of the clergy.^ e
first prevented the spiritual power from concentrating in
^he same lines as the temporal power; and the latmr
prevented the establishment of a priestly caste, during
^ time when all power tended to hereditary form,
lu her efforts for the abolition of slavery; in her T-ruce
of God; in her monastic orders;. in her -councils w ic
foiled nations, and her edicts which ran without r'egard
0 political boundaries; in the low-born hands in w ic
placed a sign before which the proudest knelt;.m her
524
Book X
THE LAW OP HUMAN PEOGRESS
bishops who by consecration became the peers of the
greatest nobles; in her “Servant of Servants/’ for so
his official title ran,^ who, by virtue of the ring of a
simple fisherman, claimed the right to arbitrate between
nations, and whose stirrup was held by kings; the
Church, in spite of everything, was yet a promoter of
association, a witness for the natural equality of men;
and by the Church herself was nurtured a spirit that,
when her early work of association and emancipation
was well-nigh done — ^when the ties she had knit had
become strong, and the learning she had -preserved had
been given to the world — broke the chains with which
she would have fettered the human mind, and in a great
part of Europe rent her organization.
The rise -and growth of European civilization is too
vast and complex a subject to be thrown into proper
perspective and relation in a few paragraphs; but in all
its details, as in its main features, it illustrates the
truth that progress goes on just as society tends toward
closer association and greater equality. Civilization is
co-operation. Union and liberty are its factors. The
great extension of association — not alone in the growth
of larger and denser communities, but in the increase of
commerce and the manifold exchanges which knit each
community together and link them with other though
widely separated communities; the growth of interna-
tional and municipal law; the advances in security of
property and of person, in individual liberty, and to-
wards democratic government — advances, in short, to-
wards the recognition of the equal rights to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness — it is these that make our
modem civilization so much greater, so much higher,
than any that has gone before. It is these that have set
free the mental power which has rolled back the veil of
ignorance which hid all biit a small portion of the globe
from men’s knowledge; which has measured the orbits of
the circling spheres and bids us see moving, pulsing life
Chap. 111.
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS
525
ID a drop of water; which has opened to us the ante-
chamber of nature’s mysteries and read the secrets of a
■Jong-buried past; which has harnessed in our service
physical forces beside which man’s efforts are puny; and
increased productive power by a thousand great inven-
tions.
In that spirit of fatalism to which I have alluded as
pervading current literature, it is the fashion to speak
®veii of war and -slavery as means of human progress.
Sut war, which is the opposite of association, can aid
progress only when it prevents further war or breaks
'town anti-social barriers which are themselves passive
War.
As for slavery, I cannot see how it could ever have
Dided in establishing freedom, and freedom, the synonym
'll equality, is, from the very rudest state in which man
oan be imagined, the stimulus and condition of progress.
Auguste Comte’s idea that the institution of slavery de-
stroyed cannibalism is as fanciful as Elia’s humorous
option of the way mankind acquired a taste for roast
pig- It assumes that a propensity that has never been
ound developed in man save as the result of the most-
iiDnatural conditions — ^the -direst want or the most bru-
D izing superstitions* — is an original impulse, and that
C) even in his lowest state the highest of all animals,
natural appetites which the nobler brutes do not
snow. And so of the idea that slavery began civilization
^ piling slave owners leisure for improvement.
Slavery never did and never could aid improvement,
ether the community consist of a single master and
^ single slave, or of thousands of masters and millions of
slavery necessarily involves a waste of human
Sandwich Islanders did honor to their good chiefs by
Hot f bodies. Their bad and tsTannical chiefs they would
■y. . ^nch. The New Zealanders had a notion that by eating
seern .they acquired their strength and "vnlor. And this
to be -Uie general origin of eating prisoners of war.
526
Book X
THE LAW OP HUMAN PHOGEESS
power f for not only is slave labor less productive than
free labor, but the power of masters is likewise wasted
in holding and watching their slaves, and is called away
from directions in which real improvement lies. From
first to last, slavery, like every other denial of the natu-
ral equality of men, has hampered and prevented prog-
ress. Just in proportion as slavery plays an important
part in the social organization does improvement cease.
That in the classical world slavery was so universal, is
undoubtedly the reason why the mental activity which
so polished literature and refined art never hit on any
of the great discoveries and inventions which distinguish
modern civilization. No slave-holding people ever were
an inventive people. In a slave-holding community the
upper classes may become luxurious and polished; but
never inventive. Wliatever degrades the laborer and
robs him of the fruits, of his toil stifles the spirit of
invention and forbids the utilization of inventions and
discoveries even when made. To freedom alone is given
the spell of power which summons the genii in whose
keeping are the_ treasures of earth and the viewless
forces of the air.
The law of human progress, what is it but the moral
law? Just as social adjustments promote justice, just
as they acknowledge the equality of right between man
and man, just as they insure to each the perfect liberty
which is bounded only by the equal liberty of every
other, must civilization advance. Just as they fail in
this, must advancing civilization come to a halt and
recede. Political economy and social science cannot
teach any lessons that are not embraced in the simple,
truths that were taught to poor fishermen and Jewish
peasants by One who eighteen hundred years ago was
crucified — the simple truths which, beneath' the warpings
of selfishness and the distortions of superstition, seem to
underlie every religion that has ever striven to formu*
late the spiritual yearnings of man.
CHAPTER IV
HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE
The conclusion we have thus reached harmonizes com-
pletely with our previous conclusions.
This consideration of the law of human progress not
only brings the politico-economic laws, which in this in-
quiry we have worked out, within the scope of a higher
law— ^perhaps the very highest law our minds can grasp
^but it proves that the making of land common prop-
erty in the way I have proposed would give an enormous
, impetus to civilization, while the refusal to do so must
entail retrogression. A civilization like ours must either
advance or go back; it cannot stand still. It is ^ot hke
those homogeneous civilizations, such as that of t e i e
Valley, which molded men for their places and put them
in it like bricks into a pyramid. It much more resem
bles that civilization whose rise and fall is within his-
toric times, and from which it sprung. _
There is just now a disposition to scoff at any imp i
eation that we are not in all respects progressing, and
the spirit of our -times is that of the edict which- the llat-
toring premier proposed to the Chinese Emperor d
burned the ancient books — ^‘‘that all who may are o
speak together about' the She and the Shoo be put to
^eath; that those who make mention of the pust so a
to blame the present be put to death along wi
■ relatives.” . ,, ,
Yet it is evident that there have been times m de-
^bne, just as there have been times of advance; and it i
.127
628
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS
BookX,
further evident that these epochs of decline could not at
first have been generally recognized.
He would have been a rash man who, when Augustus
was changing the Rome of brick to the Rome of marble,
when wealth was augmenting and magnificence increas-
ing, when victorious legions were extending the frontier,
when manners were becoming more refined, language
more polished, and literature rising to higher splendors
— he would have been a rash man who then would have
said that Rome was entering her decline. Yet such was
the case.
And whoever will look may see that though our civili-
zation is apparently advancing with greater rapidity
than ever, the same cause which turned Roman progress
into retrogression is operating now.
What has destroyed every previous civilization has
been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth
and power. . This same tendency, operating with in-
creasing force, is observable in our civilization to-day,
showing itself in every progressive community, and with
greater intensity the more progressive the community.
Wages and interest tend constantly to fall, rent to rise,
the rich to become very much richer, the poor to become .
more helpless and hopeless, and the middle class to be
swept' away.
. I have traced this tendency to its cause. I have shown
Jjy what simple means this cause may be removed. I
now wish to point out how, if this is not done, progress
must turn to decadence, and modem civilization decline
to barbarism, as have all previous civilizations'. It is
worth 'while to point out how this may occur, as many
p}0 being unable to see how progress may pass into
^ Progression, conceive such a thing impossible. Gibbon,
instance, thought that modern civilization could
jjg destroyed because there remained no barbarians
errun it; and it is a common idea that the invention
Chap. IV. HOW MODERN CmLIZATION MAY DECLINE 529
by so multiplying books has prevented the
po^ibility of knowledge ever again being lost,
iiie conditions of social progress, as we have traced
he law, are association and equality. The general
cadency of modern development, since the time when
can first discern the gleams of civilization in the
arkness which followed the fall of the Western Empire,
toward political and legal equality — ^to the
abolition of slavery; to the abrogation of status; to the
sweeping away of hereditary privileges; to the substitu-
lon of parliamentary'- for arbitrary government; to the
^^ght of private judgment in matters of religion; to the
equal security in person and property of high and
weak and strong; to the greater freedom of move-
and occupation, of speech and of the press. The
. modern civilization is the history of advances
mis direction — of the struggles and triumphs of per-
political, and religious freedom. And the general
IS shown by the fact that just as this tendency has
^sserted itself civilization has advanced, while just as it
L® been repressed or forced back ci-vilization has been
checked.
This tendency has reached its full expression in the
^erican Republic, where political and legal rights are
solutely equal, and, owing to the system of rotation in
, even the gro-wth of a bureaucracy is prevented;
^ ere every religious belief or non-belief stands on the
^ footing ;. where every boy may hope to be Presi-
ent, every naan has an equal voice in public affairs, and
cifiicial is mediately or immediately dependent for
® ®bort lease of his place upon a popular vote. This
ejrt some triumphs to win in England, in
ceding the suffrage, and sweeping away the vestiges ,
Co ^°?^^chy, aristocracy, and prelacy; while in such
Untries ,as Germany and Prussia, where divine right is
^ ^ good deal more than a legal fiction, it has a con-
530
THE LAW OF HUMAN PEOGRESS
JBoo^ X.
siderable distance to go. But it is the prevailing tend-
ency, and how soon Europe will be completely republican
is only a matter of time, or rather of accident. The
United States are therefore, in this respect, the most ad-
vanced of all the great nations, in a direction in which
all are advancing, and in the United States we see just
how much this tendency to personal and political free-
dom can of itself accomplish.
Now, the first effect of the tendency to political equal-
ity was to the more equal distribution of wealth and
power; for, while population is comparatively sparse,
inequalit3’’ in the distribution of wealth is principally due
to the inequality of personal rights, and it is only as
material progress goes on that the tendency to inequality
involved in the reduction of land to private ownership
strongly appears. But it is now manifest that absolute
political equality does not in itself prevent the tendency
to inequality involved in the private ownership of land,
and it is further evident that political equality, co-
existing with an increasing tendency to the unequal
distribution of wealth, must ultimately beget either the
despotism of organized tyranny or the worse despotism
of anarchy.
To turn a republican government into a despotism the
basest and most brutal, it is not necessaiy formally to
change its constitution or abandon popular elections.
It was centuries after Csesar before the absolute master
of the Homan world pretended to rule other than by
authority of a Senate that trembled before him.
But forms are nothing when substance has gone, and
the forms of popular government are those from which
the substance of freedom may most easily go. Extremes
meet, and a government of universal suffrage and theo-
retical equality may, under conditions which impel the
change, most readily become a despotism. For there
despotism advances in the name and with the might
Chap. IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAT DECLINE 531
of the people. The single source of power once secured,
everything is secured. There is no unfranchised class
to whom appeal may be made, no privileged orders who
in defending their own rights may defend those of all.
No bulwark remains to stay the flood, no eminence o
rise above it. They were belted barons led by a mitered
archbishop who curbed the Plantagenet with Magna
Charta; it was the middle classes who broke the pride of
the Stuarts; but a mere aristocracy of wealth will never
struggle w^hile it can hope to bribe a tyrant.
And when the disparity of condition increases, so oes
universal suffrage make it easy to seize the source of
power, for the greater is the proportion of power m toe
hands of those who feel no direct interest in the conduct
cf government; who, tortured by want and emb^ e y
poverty, .are ready to sell their votes to the highest oia-
or follow the lead of the most blatant demagogue;
cr who, made bitter by hardships, may even look upon
profligate and tyrannous government with the satisfac-
tion we may imagine the proletarians and slaves o ome
to have felt, as they saw a Caligula or Nero raging
. among the rich patricians. Given a communi y^ wi
republican institutions, in which one class is too ric o
he shorn of its luxuries, no matter how pub ic a a
^re administered, and another so poor that a few o ars
ou election day will seem more than any abstract con-
sideration; in which the few roll in wealth and tlie
seethe with ' discontent at a condition of things tney
know not how to remedy, and power must •
nands of jobbers who will buy and sell it as the ^rae^-
uns sold the Roman purple, or into the hands o
gogues who will seize and wield it for a time, on y
be displaced by worse demagogues. . -u
Where there is anything like an equal "kjition of
Wealth — ^that is to say, where there is general pa ri ,
■virtue, and intelligence— the more democratic the gov-
532
THE LAW OP HUMAN PROGRESS
Book X>
eminent the better it will be; but where there is gross
inequality in the distribution of wealth, the more demo-
cratic the government the worse it will be; for, while
rotten democracy may not in itself be worse than rotten
autocracy, its effects upon national character will be
worse. To give the suffrage to tramps, to paupers, to
men to whom the chance to labor is a boon, to men who
must beg, or steal, or starve, is to invoke destruction.
To put political power in the hands of men embittered
and degraded by poverty is to tie firebrands to foxes and
turn them loose amid the standing corn ; it is to put but
the eyes of a Samson and to twine his arms around the
pillars of national life.
Even the accidents. of hereditary succession or of selec-
tion by lot, the plan of some of the ancient republics,
may sometimes place the wise and just in power; but in
a corrupt ^democracy the tendency is always to give
power to the worst. Honesty and patriotism are
weighted, and unscrupulousness commands success. The
best gravitate to the bottom, the worst float to the top,
and the vile will only be ousted by 'the viler. While as
national character must gradually assimilate to the
qualities that win power, and consequently respect, that
demoralization of opinion goes on which in the long
panorama of history we may see over and over again
transmuting races of freemen into races of slaves.
As in England in the -last century, when Parliament
was but a close corporation of the aristocracy, a corrupt
oligarchy clearly fenced off from the masses may exist
without much effect on national character, because in
that case power is associated in the popular mind with
other things than corruption. But where there, are no
hereditary distinctions,^, and men are habitually seen to
raise themselves by corrupt qualities from the lowest
places to wealth and power, tolerance of these qualities
finally becomes admiration. A corrupt democratic gov-
Cfiap. IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE 533
ernment must finally corrupt the people, and when a
people become corrupt there is no resurrection, i^ne
life is gone, .only the carcass remains; and it is e u
for the plowshares of fate to bury it out of sigh . ^
Now this transformation of popular governmen m o
despotism of the vilest and most degrading kind, w ic
must inevitably result from the unequal distribution oi
wealth, is not a thing of the far future. It has already
begun in the United States, and is rapidly on
under our eyes. That our legislative bodies are ® ^
deteriorating in standard; that men of the highest abil-
ity and character are compelled to eschew po i ics, an
the arts of the iobber count' for more than the reputa-
-tion of the statesman; that voting is done more recK-
lessly and the power of money is increasing , a ^
harder to arouse the people to the necessity o re
and more difficult to carry them out; that political dii-
ferences are ceasing to be differences of principle, an
abstract ideas are losing their power; that Parties are
passing into the control of what in general
^ould be oligarchies and dictatorships, are a evi
of political decline, , j. •+ r tTptp
The type of modern growth is the great ci y.
are to be found the greatest wealth and the eepes p
0%. And it is here that popular government has mo
clearly broken down. In all the great American
there is to-day as clearly defined a ruling class as in tne
most aristocratic countries of the world. I s m
oarry wards in their pockets, make up the sl^ates i
■ dominating conventions, distribute offices as _ey
gain together, and — though they toil not, nei ^
they spin— wear the best of raiment and spend mo y
lavishly. They are men of power, whose favor the am
must court and whose vengeance ‘
^0 are these men? The wdse, the good, t e r „
dien who have earned the confidence of their fello
534
Book X.
THE LAW OP HUJIAN PEOGEESS
Citizens by the purity of their lives, the splendor of their
talents, their probity in public trusts, their deep study
of the problems of government? No; they are gamblers,
saloon keepers, pugilists, or worse, who have made a
trade of controlling votes and of buying and selling
offices and official acts. They stand to the government
of these cities as the Prmtorian Guards did to that of
declining Rome. He who would wear the purple, fill
the curule chair, or have the fasces carried before him,
must go or send his messengers to their camps, give them
donatives and make them promises. It‘is through these
men that the rich corporations and powerful pecuniary .
interests can pack the Senate and the bench with their
creatures. It is these men who make School Directors,
Super^dsors, Assessors, members of the Legislature, Con-
gressmen. Wliy, there are many election districts in
the United States in which a George Washington, a Ben-
jamin Franklin or a Thomas Jefferson could no more gc ■
to the lower house of a State Legislature than under the
Ancient Regime a base-born peasant could become a -
Marshal of France, Their very character would be an
insuperable disqualification.
In theory we are intense democrats. The proposal to
sacrifice swine in the temple would hardly have excited
greater horror and indignation in Jerusalem of old than
would among us that of conferring a distinction of rank
upon our most eminent citizen. But is there not grow-
ing up among us a class who have all the power without
any of the virtues of aristocracy? We have simple citi-
zens who control thousands of miles of, railroad, millions
of acres of land, the means of livelihood of great num-
bers of men; who name the Governors of sovereign States
as they name their clerks, choose Senators as they choose
attorneys, and whose will is as supreme with Legislatures
as that of a French King sitting in bed of justice. The
undercurrents of the times seem to sweep us back again
Chap. IV' HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE 535
to the old conditions from which we dreamed we had
escaped. The development of the artisan and commer-
cial classes gradually broke down feudalism after it had
become so complete that men thought of heaven as
organized on a feudal basis, and ranked the first and
second persons of the Trinity as suzerain and tenant-in-
chief. But now the development of manufactures and
exchange, acting in a social organization in which land
is' made private property, threatens to compel every
Worker to seek a master, as the insecurity which followed
the final break-up of the Roman Empire compelled every
freeman to seek a lord. Nothing seems exempt from this
fendency. Industry everywhere tends to assume a form
i^ which one is master and many serve. And when
°ne is master and the others serve, the one will control
others, even in such matters as votes. Just as the
®i^glish landlord votes his tenants, so does the New
^Dgland mill owner vote his operatives.
There is no mistaking it— the very foundations of
society are being sapped before our eyes, while we ask,
■ is it possible that such a civilization as this, with i s
Railroads, and daily newspapers, and electric telegrap is,
should ever be destroyed? While literature breathes but
he belief that we have been, are, and for the future
^ost be, leaving the savage state further and further
ehind us, there are indications that we are actua y
fuming back again toward barbarism. Let me ilms-
^ute; One of the characteristics of barbarism is the mw
Regard for the rights of person and of property. T a
fhe laws of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors imposed as pen-
u y for murder a fine proportioned to the rank of g
Victim j while our law knows no distinction of ran > an
protects the lowest from the highest, the poorest rom
richest, by the uniform penalty of death, is oo ’G
upon as evidence of their barbarism and our civilization,
^ud so, that piracy, and robbery, and slave-trading,
536
B6ohX4
the iiAW OP HUMAN PROGRESS
and blackmailing, were once regarded as legitimate
occupations, is conclusive proof of the rude state of
development from which we have so far progressed.
But it is a matter of fact that, in spite of our laws, any
one who has money enough and wants to kill another
Di3'y go into any one of our great centers of population
and business, and gratify his desire, and then surrender
himself to justice, with the chances as a hundred to one
that he will suffer no greater penalty than a temporary
imprisonment and the loss of a sum proportioned partly ,
to his ovm wealth and partly to the wealth and standing
of the man he kills. His money will be paid, not to the .
family of the tnurdered man, who have lost their protec-
tor; not to the state, which has lost a citizen; but to
lawyers who understand how to secure delays, to find
witnesses, and get juries to disagree.
And so, if a man steal enough, he may be sure that
his punishment will practically amount but to the loss
of a part of' the proceeds of his theft; and if he steal
enough to get off with a fortune, he will be greeted by
his acquaintances as a viking might have been greeted
after a successful cruise. Even though he robbed those
tvho trusted him; even though he robbed the widow and
the fatherless; he has only to get enough, and he may
safely flaunt his wealth in the eyes of day.
Now, the tendency in- this direction is an increasing
one. It is shown in greatest force where the inequalities
in the distribution of wealth are greatest,’ and it shows
itself as they increase. If it be not a return to barbar-
ism, what is it? The failures of justice to which I have
alluded are only illustrative of the increasing debility
of our legal machinery in every department. . It is
becoming common to hear men say that it would be
better to revert to first principles and abolish la'^, for
then in self-defense the people would form "Vigilance
C^-ap. IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAT DECLINE 537
Committees and take justice into their own hands. Is
this indicative of advance or retrogression?
this is matter of common observation. Though
may not speak it openl}’’, the general faith in repub-
hcan institutions is, where they have reached their full-
est development, narrowing and weakening. It is no
longer that confident belief in republicanism as the
source of national blessings that it once was. Thought-
iil men are beginning to see its dangers, without seeing
0^ to escape them; are beginning to accept the view
of Macaulay and distrust that of Jefferson.* And the
Poople at large are becoming used to the growing cor-
^Pl'ion. The most ominous political sign in the United
plates to-day is the growth of a sentiment which either
o^bts the existence of an honest man in public office
, looks on him as a fool for not seizing his opportuni-
sms. That is to sav, the people themselves are becoming
corrupted. Thus in the United States to-day is republi-
caa government running the course it must inevitably
0 low under conditions which cause the unequal dis-
of wealth.
Where that course leads is clear to whoever will think,
s corruption becomes chronic; as public spirit is lost;
m traditions of honor, virtue, and patriotism are weak-
as law is brought into contempt and reforms
ecome hopeless; then in the festering mass will be gen-
a ed Volcanic forces, which shatter and rend when
^6ming accident gives them vent. Strong, unscrupulous
o/?’ up upon occasion, will become the exponents
d P°Polar desires or fierce popular passions, and
®®lde forms that have lost their vitality. The
Vai ^gain be mightier than the pen, and in carni-
s of destruction brute force and wild frenzy will
Macaulay’s letter to Randall, the biographer of Jef-
538
THE LAW OF HIJIVIAN' PROGRESS
BookZ
alternate with the lethargy of a declining, civilization.
I speak of the United States only because the United
States is the most advanced of all the great nations,
^Tiat shall w'e say of Europe, where dams of ancient.law
and^ custom pen up the swelling waters and standing
armies weigh down the safety valves, though year by
year the fires grow hotter underneath? Europe tends to
republicanism under conditions that will not admit of
true republicanism — ^under conditions that substitute for
the calm and august figure of Liberty the petroleuse and
the guillotine!
Whence shall come the new barbarians? Go through
the squalid quarters of great cities, and you may see,
even now, their gathering hordes! How shall learning
perish? Men will cease to read, and books will kindle
fires and be turned into cartridges!
It is startling to think how slight the traces that would
be left of our civilization did it pass through the throes
which have accompanied the decline of every previous
civilization. Paper will not last like parchment, nor are
our most massive buildings and monuments to be com-
pared in solidity with the rock-hevui temples and titanic
edifices of the old civilizations.* And . invention has '
given us, not merely the steam engine and the printing
press, but petroleum, nitro-glycerine, and dynamite.
Yet to hint, to-day, that our civilization may possibly
be tending to decline, seems like the wildness of pessi-
mism. The special tendencies to which I have alluded
are obvious to thinking men, but with the majority of
thinking men, as with the great masses, the belief in
substantial progress is yet deep and strong — a funda-
mental belief which admits not the shadow of a doubt.
* It is also, it seems to me, instructive to note how inade-
quate and utterly misleading would be the idea of our eivuiza-'
tion which could be gained from the religious and funereal monu-
ments of our time, which are all we have from which to gam ou
ideas of the buried civilizations.
Chap.iy. HOW MODERN CH’-ILIZATION 1MA.Y DECLINE 539
one who will think over the matter will see
this must necessarily be the case where advance
Sradually passes into retrogression. For in social devel-
opment, as in ever3d.hing else, motion tends to persist in
s raiglit lines, and therefore, where there has been a
pievious advance, it is extremely difficult to recognize
decline, even when it has fully commenced; there is an
3 most irresistible tendency to believe that the forward
Movement which has been advance, and is still going on,
js still advance. The web of beliefs, customs, laws,
mstitutions, and habits of thought, which each commu-
• ^J. constantly spinning, and which produces in the
m ividual environed by it all the differences of national
oiaracter, is never unraveled. That is to say, in the de-
of civilization, communities do not go down by the
J_me paths that they came up. For instance, the de-
J of civilization as manifested in government would
c take us back from republicanism to constitutional
^i^d thence to the feudal sj^^stem; it would
in iiHperatorship and anarchy. As manifested
Q, it would not take us back into the faiths of
inf' into Protestantism or Catholicity, but
jjj ^ forms of superstition, of which possibly Mor-
and other even grosser “isms” may give some
t As manifested in knowledge, it would not
a us toward Bacon, but toward the literati of China.
Pe ■ ^ retrogression of civilization, following a
advance, may be so gradual as to attract no
sa rime ; nay, how that decline must neces-
^y the great 'majority -of men, be mistaken for
m easily seen. For instance, there is an enor-
gjj y^^^^m'ence between Grecian art of the classic period
Par' of the lower empire; yet the change was accom-
0^ rather caused, by a change of taste. The
niost quickly followed this change of taste
0 m their day regarded as the superior artists. And
540
THE LAW OF HUMAN PEOGEESS
Book Zi
SO of literature. As it became more vapid, puerile, and
stilted, it would be in obedience to an altered taste,
which would regard its increasing weakness as increasing
strength and beauty. The really good writer would not
find readers; he would be regarded as rude, dry, or dull.
And so would the drama decline; not because there was
a lack of good plays, but because the prevailing taste
became more and more that of a less cultured class, who,
of course, regard that which they most admire as the
best of its kind. And so, too, of religion; the supersti-
tions which a superstitious people will add to it will be
regarded by them as improvements. While, as the de-
cline goes on, the return to barbarism, where it is not in
itself regarded as an advance, -will seem necessary to
meet the exigencies of the times.
For instance, flogging, as a punishment for certain
offenses, has been recently restored to the penal code of
England, and has been strongly advocated on this side
of the Atlantic, I express no opinion as to whether this
is or is not a better punishment for crime than imprison-
ment. I only point to the fact as illustrating how an
increasing amount of crime and an increasing embarrass-
ment as to the maintenance of prisoners, both obvious
tendencies at present, might lead to a fuller return to
the physical cruelty of barbarous codes. The use of tor-
ture in judicial investigations, which steadily grew with
the' decline of Roman civilization, it is thus easy to see,
might, as manners brutalized and crime increased, be
demanded as a necessary improvement of the. criminal
law, . . . ■ .
Whether in the present drifts of opinion and taste'
there are as yet any indications of retrogression, it is not
necessary to inquire; but there are many things about
which there can be no dispute, which go to show that
our civilization has reached a. critical period, and that
unless a new start is made in the direction of social
Ckp. IV. now MODERN CIVILIZATION JiLAV DECLINE
541l
equality, the nineteenth century mny to the future mark
its climax. These industrial depressions, which cause as
much waste and sufTcring as famines or wars, are like
the twinges and shocks wliich precede paralj'sis. Every'
ivhere is it evident that the tendency’’ to inequality, w'hich
is the necessary result of material progress where land
is monopolized, cannot go much further w’ithout cairy-
ing our civilization into that downward path vhich is
so easy to enter and so hard to abandon. Everywhere
the increasing intensity of the struggle to live, the in-
creasing necessity for straining every nerve to prevent
being thronm down and trodden under foot in the scram-
ble for wealth, is draining the forces which gain an
Maintain improvements. In cveiy civilized country
pauperism, crime, insanity, and suicides are increasing.
In every chdlizcd countiy the diseases are increamng
^bich come from overstrained nerves, from insufficient
nourishment, from squalid lodgings, from unwholesome
and monotonous occupations, from premature labor o
. children, from the tasks and crimes which poverty im-
poses upon women. In every highly civilized country
^be expectation of life, wffiich gradually rose for seyera
centuries, and which seems to have culminated about the
best quarter of this century, appears to be now dimin-
ishing.*
• It is not an advancing civilization that such figiwes
®bow. It is a civilization which in its undercurrents has
already begun to recede. When the tide turns in ay
. pr river from flood to ebb, it is not all at once; but here
It still runs on, though there it has begun to recede.
Statistics which show these things are _ collected m co
yenient form in a volume entitled “Deterioration and Kace
Education,” by Samuel Royce, which has been .
tnbuted by the venerable Peter Cooper of New York. Stryigely
the only remedy proposed by Mr. Royce is
^ saiaent of Kindergarten' schools.
CHAPTER V
THE CENTRAL TRUTH
In the short space to which this latter part of our
inquiry is necessarily confined, I have been obliged to
omit much that I would like to say, and to touch briefly
where an exliaustive consideration would not be out of
place.
Nevertheless, this, at least, is evident, that the truth
to which we were led in the politico-economic branch of
our inquiry is as clearly apparent in the rise and fall
of nations and the gi-owth and decay of civilizations, and
that it accords with those deep-seated recognitions of
relation and sequence that we denominate moral percep-
tions. Thus have been given to our conclusions the
^eatest certitude and highest sanction.
This truth involves both a menace and a promise. It
■shows that the evils arising from the unjust and unequal
distribution of wealth, which are becoming more and
more apparent as modem civilization goes on, are not
incidents of progress, but tendencies which must bring
progress to a halt; that they will not cure themselves,
but, on the contrary, must, unless their cause is removed,
grow greater and greater, until they sweep us back into
barbarism by the road every previous civilization has
trod. But it also shows that these evils are not imposed
by natural laws; that they spring solely from social
maladjustments which ignore natural laws, and that in
j-emoving their cause we shall be giving an enormous
impetus to progress.
544
Chap. V.
THE CENTRAL TRUTH
545..
. The poverty which in the midst of abundance pinches
and embrutes men, and all the manifold evils which now
from it, spring from a denial of justice. In permitting
the monopolization of the opportunities which na ure
freely offers to all, we have ignored the fundamental
law of justice — for, so far as we can see, when we view
things upon a large scale, justice seems to be the
preme law of the universe. But by sweeping away i>^
injustice and asserting the rights of all men to na ura
opportunities, we shall conform ourselves to the law
—we shall remove the great cause of unnatural in-
equality in the distribution of wealth and power, we
, shall abolish poverty; tame the ruthless passions of
greed ; dry up the springs of vice and misery , ig
dark places the lamp of knowledge; give new vigor to
invention and a fresh impulse to discovery; substitum
political strength for political weakness; and make
tyranny and anarchy impossible. .
The reform I have proposed accords with all ^
politically, socially, or morally desirable. It as
qualities of a true reform, for it will make all o
torms easier. What is it but the carrying out in letter
snd spirit of the truth enunciated in the Dec ara ion o
independence— the “self-evident” truth that is the bean
nnd soul of the Declaration— all men are created
that they are endowed by their Creator mth
^frtain unalienable . fights ; that among these are uje,
’dierty^ and the -pursuit of happiness!” . , , ,
These rights are denied when the equal rig o
—on which and by which men alone can live-— is ‘
Equality of political rights will not compensate for tn
denial of the equal right to the bounty of nature,
itical liberty, when the equal right to land is e j
becomes, as population increases and invention o ,
Merely the liberty to compete for employment at star-
f^atida wages. This is the truth that we have igno
542
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS
Book X
When the sun passes the meridian, it can be told only
by the way the short shadows fall; for the heat of the,
day yet increases. But as sure as the turning tide must
soon run full ebb; as sure as the declining sun must
bring darkness, so sure is it, that though knowledge yet
increases and invention marches on, and new states are
being settled, and cities still expand, yet civilization has
begun to wane when, in proportion to population, we
must build more and more prisons, more and more
almshouses, more and more insane asylums. It is not
from top to bottom that societies die; it is from bottom
to top.
But there are evidences far more palpable than any
that can be given by statistics, of tendencies to:the ebb
of civilization. There is a vague but general feeling of
disappointment; an increased bitterness among the work-
ing classes; a wddespread feeling of unrest and brooding
revolution. If this were accompanied by a definite idea
of how relief is to be obtained, it would be a hopeful
sign; but it is not. Though the schoolmaster has been
abroad some time, the general power of tracing effect
to cause does not seem a whit improved. The reaction
toward protectionism, as the reaction toward other ex-
ploded fallacies of government, shows this.* And even
the philosophic free-thinker cannot look upon. that vast
change in religious ideas that is now sweeping over the
civilized world without feeling that this tremendous fact
may have most momentous relations,, which only the
future can develop. For what is going on is not a
change in the form of religion, but the negation and
»Tn point of constructive statesmanship — ^the recogmtion of
fundamental principles and the adaptation of means to ends,
the Constitution of the United States, adopted a centuiy ago,
is. greatly superior to the latest State Constitutions, the-mo^
recent of which is that of ■ Califorma — a piece of utter botch-
work.
Chap. IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAT DECLINE 543
destruction of the ideas from which religion springs.
Christianity is not simply clearing itself of superstitions,
but in the popular mind it is dying at the root, as the
old paganisms were dying when Christianity entered the
world. And nothing arises to take its place. The fun-
damental ideas of an intelligent Creator and of a future
life are in the general mind rapidly weakening. Now,
whether this may or may not be in itself an advance, the
importance of the part which religion has .played in the
world's history shows the importance of the change that
IS now going on. Unless human nature has suddenly
altered in what the universal history of the race shows
to be its deepest characteristics, the mightiest actions and
reactions are thus preparing. Such stages of thought
have heretofore always marked periods of transition^
On a smaller scale and to a less depth (for I think any
one who will notice the drift of our literature, and talk
npon such subjects with the men he meets, will see that
it is sub-soil and not surface plowing that materialistic
ideas are now doing), such a state of thought preceded
the French Revolution. But the closest parallel to the
Wreck of religious ideas now going on is to be found in
that period in which ancient civilization began to pass
from splendor to decline. What change may come, no
mortal man can tell, but that some great change must
come, thoughtful men begin to feel. The civilized world
IS trembling on the verge of a great movement. Either
it must be a leap upward, which will open the way to
advances yet undreamed of, or it must be a plunge
downward which will carry us back toward barbarism.
CHAPTER V
THE CENTRAL TRUTH
In the short space to which this latter part of our
inquiry is necessarily confined, I have been obliged to
omit much that I would like to say, and to touch briefly
where an exhaustive consideration would not be out of
place.
Nevertheless, this, at least, is evident, that the truth
to which we were led in the politico-economic branch of
our inquiry is as clearly apparent in the rise and fall
of nations and the gi-owth and decay of civilizations, and.
that it accords with those deep-seated recognitions of
relation and sequence that we denominate moral percep-
tions. Thus have been given to our conclusions the
greatest certitude and highest sanction.
This truth involves both a menace and a promise. It
•shows that the evils arising from the unjust and unequal
distribution of wealth, which are becoming more and
more apparent as modern civilization goes on, are not
incidents of progress, but tendencies which must bring
progress to a halt; that they will not cure themselves,
hut, on the contrary, must, unless their cause is removed,
grow greater and greater, until they sweep us back into
barbarism by the road every previous civilization has
trod. But it also shows that these evils are not imposed
by natural laws; that they spring solely from social
maladjustments which ignore natural laws, and that in
removing their cause we shall be giving kn enormous
impetus to progress.
544
Chap. V.
THE CENTRAL TRUTH
545.
. The poverty vliicli in the midst of abundance pinches
and embrutes men, and all the manifold evils which flow
from it, spring from a denial of justice. In permitting
the monopolization of the opportunities which nature
freely offers to all, w’c have ignored the fundamental
law of justice — for, so far as we can see, when we view
things upon a large scale, justice seems to be the su^
preme law of the universe. But by sweeping away tii^
injustice and asserting the rights of all men to natural
opportunities, we shall conform ourselves to the law
—we shall remove the great cause of unnatural in-
equality in the distribution of wealth and power, we
, shall abolish poverty; tame the ruthless passions o
greed; dry up the springs of vice and misery, hgi
dark places the lamp of knowledge; give new vigor to
invention and a fresh impulse to discovery; substitute
political strength for political weakness; and make
tyranny and anarchy impossible. .
The reform I have proposed accords with all ra
politically, socially, or morally desirable. It as e
qualities of a true reform, for it will make all other re-
forms easier. What is it but the carrying out in lettei
and spirit of the truth enunciated in the Declara ion o
Independence — ^the “self-evident” truth that is t e ea
nnd soul of the Declaration — ‘‘That all wen are crea e
that they are endowed by their Creator mth
<^f^tain unalienable rights; that among these are uje,
and the ‘pursuit of happiness!” .
These rights are denied when the equal ng . ^ ,
—on which and by which men alone can live is '
Equality of political rights will not compensate or e
denial of the equal right to the bounty of nature, ^o-
kical liberty, when the equal right to land is ’
becomes, as population increases and invention goes ,
Merely the liberty to compete for employment at star-
''^ntion wages. This is the truth that we have ignore ,
546
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS
Bock X.
And so there come beggars in our streets and tramps on
our roads; and poverty enslaves men whom we boast are
political sovereigns; and want breeds ignorance that our
schools cannot enlighten; and citizens vote as their mas-
ters dictate; and the demagogue usurps the part of the
statesman; and gold weighs in the scales of justice; and
in high places sit those who do not pay to civic virtue,
even the compliment of hypocrisy; and the pillars of the
republic that we thought so strong already bend under
an increasing strain.
We honor Liberty in name and in form. We set up
her statues and sound her praises.- But we have .not
fully trusted her. And with our growth so grow her
demands. She will have no half service!
Liberty! it is a word to conjure with, not to vex the
ear in empty boastings. For Liberty means Justice, and
Justice is the natural law — the law of health and sym-
metry and strength, of fraternity and co-operation.
- They who look upon Liberty aS having accomplished .
her mission when she has abolished hereditary privileges
and given men the ballot, who think of her as having no
further relations to, the everyday affairs of life, have
not seen her real grandeur — ^to them the poets who have
sung of her must seem rhapsodists, arid her martyrs
fools! As the sun is the lord of life, as well as of light;
as his beams not merely pierce the clouds, but support
all growth, supply all motion, and call forth from what
would otherwise be a cold and inert mass all the infinite
diversities of being and beauty, so is liberty to mankind.
It is hot for an abstraction that men have, toiled and
died; that in every age the witnesses of Liberty have
stood forth, and the martyrs of Liberty have suffered.
We speak of Liberty as one thing, and of virtue,
wealth, knowledge, invention, national strength and na-
tional independence as other things, Lut, of all these,.
Liberty is the source, the mother, the necessary condi-
Oiap. y. ' THE CENTRAL TRUTH 547
tion. She is to virtue what light is to color; to wealth
what sunshine is to grain; to knowledge what eyes are
to sight.' She is the genius of invention, the brawn of
■national strength, the spirit of national independence.
Where Liberty rises, there virtue grows, wealth in-'
' creases, 'knowledge expands, invention - multiplies hu'
man powers, and in strength and spirit the_ freer nation
rises among her neighbors as Saul amid his brethren
■ — ^taller and fairer. Where Liberty sinks, there virtue
fades, wealth diminishes,' knowledge is forgotten, inven-
tion'ceases, and empires once' mighty in arms and arts
become a helpless prey to freer barbarians!
Only in broken gleams and partial light has the sun
of Liberty yet beamed among men, but all progress
hath she called forth. .
•Liberty came to a race of slaves crouching under
hlgyptian whips, and led them forth from the House of
Bondage. She hardened them in the desert and made
of them a race of conquerors. The free spirit of the
Mosaic law took their thinkers up to heights where they
beheld the unity of God, and inspired their poets with
strains that yet phrase the highest ^ exaltations of
thought Liberty dawned on the Phoenician coast, and
ships passed the Pillars of Hercules to plow the un-
known sea She shed a partial light on Greece, and
marble grew to shapes of ideal beauty, words became
the instruments of subtlest thought, and against the
scanty militia of free cities the countless hosts of the
Great King broke like surges against a rock. She cast
her beams on the four-acre farms of Italian husband-
men, and born of her strength a power came forth that
conquered the world. They glinted from shields of Ger-
man 'warriors, and Augustus wept his legions. Out of
the night that followed her eclipse, her slanting rays fell
again on free cities, and a lost learning revived, modem
civilization began, a new world was unveiled; and as
548
THE LAW OP HUMAN PROGRESS
Book X.
Liberty grew, so grew art, wealth, power, knowledge,
and refinement. In the history of every nation we may
read the same truth. It was the strength born of Magna
Charta that w'on Crecy and Agincourt. It was the re-
vival of Liberty from the despotism of the Tudors that
glorified the Elizabethan age. It was the, spirit that
brought a crowned tyrant to the block that planted
here the seed of a mighty tree. It was the energy of
ancient freedom that, the moment it had gained unity,
made Spain the mightiest power of the world, only to
fall to the lowest depth of weakness when tyranny suc-
ceeded liberty. See, in France, all intellectual vigor
dying under the tyranny of the Seventeenth Century to
revive in splendor as Liberty awoke in the Eighteenth,
and on the enfranchisement of French peasants in the
Great Revolution, basing the wonderful strength that
has in our time defied defeat.
Shall we not trust her?
In our time, as in times before, creep .on the insidious
forces that, producing inequality, destroy Liberty. On
the horizon the clouds begin to lower. Liberty calls to
Us again. We must follow her further; we must trust
her fully. Either w^e must wholly accept her or. she
Jvill not stay. It is not enough that men should vote;
it is not enough that they should be theoretically equal
before the law. They must have liberty to avail them-
selves of the opportunities and means of life; they must
stand on equal terms with reference to the bounty of
nature: Either this, or Liberty withdraws her light!
Either this, or darkness comes on, and the very forces
that progress has evolved turn to powers that work de-
struction. This is the universal law. This is the lesson
of the centuries' Unless its foundations be laid in
justice the social structure cannot stand. _
Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. ■
In allowing one man to own the land on which and from
Chap. V.
the central truth
549
■which other, men must live, 'we have made them his
bondsmen in a degree which increases as material prog-
ress goes on. This is the subtile alchemy that in ways
they do not realize is extracting from 'the masses in
every civilized country the fruits of their weary toil,
■ that is instituting a harder and more hopeless slavery in
place of that which has been destroyed; that is bringing
political despotism out of political freedom, and
soon transmute democratic institutions into anarchy.
It is this that turns the blessings of material progress
into a curse. It is this that crowds human beings into
noisome cellars and squalid tenement houses; that fills
prisons and brothels; that goads men with want and
consumes them with greed; that robs wornen of t e
grace and beauty of perfect womanhood; that takes
from little children the joy and innocence of lifes
• Civilfzation so based cannot continue. The eternal
laws of the universe forbid it. .Rums of dead empires
testify, and the witness that is in every soul answers,
that it cannot be. It is something gander than Benevo-
lence, something more august than Chanty it is Justice
herself that demands of us to right this wrong Jus-
tice that will not be denied; that cannot be put off
Justice that with the scales carries the sword Shall
we ward the stroke with liturgies and prayers? Shall we
avert the decrees of immutable law by raising churches
when hungry infants moan and weary mothers weep?
Though it may take the language of Prjyer it is blas-
phemy that attributes to the inscrutable decrees of
Providence the suffering and brutishness that come of
poverty; that turns with folded hands to the All-Father
and lays on Him the responsibility for the want and
crime of our great cities. We degrade the Everiasting.
We slander the Just One. A merciful man would have
better ordered the world; a just man would crush with
550
Book ^
THE LAW OF HUMAN PKOGRESS
his foot such an ulcerous ant-hill! It is not the Al-
mighty, but we wlio are responsible for the vice and
misery that fester amid our civilization. The Creator
showers upon us his gifts — more than enough for all.
But like swine scrambling for food, we tread them in the
— ^tread them in the mire, while we tear and rend
each other!
In the very centers of our civilization to-day are want
and suffering enough to make sick at heart whoever does
not close his eyes and steel his nerves. Dare we turn
to the Creator and ask Him to relieve it?" Supposing
the prayer were heard, and at the behest with which the
universe sprang into being there should glow in the sun
a greater power; new virtue fill the air; fresh vigor the
soil; that for every blade of grass that now grows two,
should spring up, and the seed that now increases fifty-
fold should increase a hundred-fold! Would poverty
be abated or want relieved? Manifestly, no! Whatever
benefit would accrue wopld be but temporary. The new
powers streaming through the material universe could .
be utilized -only through. land. And land, being private
property, the classes that now monopolize the bounty of
the Creator would monopolize all the new bounty. Land,
owners would alone be benefited. vEents would increase,
but v/ages would still tend to the starvation point! .
This is not merely a deduction of political economy;
it is a fact of epqDerience. .We know it because we have
seen it. Within our own times, • under our very, eyes,
that Power which is aibove all, and in all, and through
all; that Power of which the whole imiverse is, .but the
manifestation; that Power which maketh all things, and
without which is mot anything made that is made, has
increased.- the bounty which men. may enjoy, as truly as
though the fertility, of . nature had. been increased. Into
the mind of one came the thought that harnessed steam
for the service of mankind. To the inner ear of another
y- THE CENTRAL .TRHTH . - 561
■ffas^whispered the secret that compels the lightning to
bear a message round the globe. . In every direction
have the laws of matter been revealed; in every de-
partment of industry have arisen arms of iron and fin-
gers of steel, whose effect upon the production of
■health has been precisely the same as an increase in
the fertility of nature. What has been the result? Sim-
ply that land owners get all -the gain. The wonderful
discoveries and inventions of oiir century have neither
increased wages nor lightened toil. The' effect has sim-
•Ply been to make the few richer; the many more help-
less!
Can it be that the gifts of the Creator may be thus
misappropriated with impunity? Is it a light thing that
labor should be robbed of its earnings while greed rolls
in wealth — ^that the many should want while the few
are surfeited? Turn to history, and on every page may
he read the lesson-, that such wrong never goes unpun-
ished; that the Nemesis that follows ^injustice never
falters nor- sleeps! Look around to-day. Can this state
of things continue? May we even say, “After us the
deluge!" Nay; the pillars of the state are trembling
even -now, and the very foundations of society begin to
quiver with pent-up forces that glow underneath. The
struggle that must either revivify, or convulse in ruin,
is near at, hand, if it .be not already begun.
'^The fiat has gone forth! With steam and electricity,
und the new powers born of progress, forces have entered
the world that will either compel us to a higher plane or
overwhelm us, as, nation after nation, as civilization
after civilization, have been overwhelmed before. It is
the delusion which precedes destruction that sees in the
popular unrest with which the civilized world is fever-
ishly pulsing only the passing effect of ephemeral causes.
Between democratic ideas and the aristocratic adjust-
ments of society there is an irreconcilable conflict. Here
552 THE LAW OF HUMAN PBOGHESS Book Z.
in the United States, as there in Europe, it may be seen
arising. We cannot go on permitting men to vote and
forcing them to tramp. We cannot go on educating boys
and girls in our public schools and then refusing them
the right to earn an honest living. We cannot go on
prating of the inalienable rights of man and then deny-
ing the inalienable right to the bounty of the Creator.
Even now, in old bottles the new wine begins to fer-’
ment, and elemental forces gather for the strife!
, But if, while there is yet time, we turn to Justice and
obey her, if we trust Liberty and follow her, the dan-
gers that now threaten must disappear, the forces tha"*
now menace will turn to agencies of elevation. Think oj
the powers now wasted; of the infinite fields of knowl-
edge yet to be explored; of the possibilities of which
the wondrous inventions of this century give us but a
hint. With want destroyed; with greed changed to
noble passions; with the fraternity that is born of equal-
ity taking the place of the jealousy and fear that now
array men against each other; with mental power loosed
by conditions that give to 'the humblest comfort and
leisure; and who shall measure the heights to which
our civilization may soar? Words fail the thought! It
is the Golden Age of which poets have sung and high-
raised seers have told in metaphor! It is the glorioift
vision which has always haunted man with gleams of
fitful splendor. It is what he saw whose eyes at Pat-
mos were closed in a trance. It is the culmination of
Christianity— the City of God on earth, with its walls
of' jasper and its gates of pearl! It 'is the reign of the
Prince of Peace!
CONCLUSION
THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE
The days of the nations bear no trace
Of all the sunshine so far foretold;
The cannon speaks in the teacher’s place —
The age is weary with work and gold.
And high hopes wither, and memories wane;
On hearths and altars the fires are dead;
jBut that brave faith hath not lived in vain—
And this is all that our watcher said.
— Frances Brown.
CONCLUSION
THE PROBLEM OF INDmOUAL LIFE
My task is done.
Yet the thought still mounts. The problems we
•have been considering lead into a problem higher and
deeper still. Behind the problems of social life lies the
problem, of individual life. I have found it impossible
to think of the one without thinking of the other, and
so, I imagine, will it be -with those who, reading this
hooki go with me in thought. For, as says Guizot,
‘‘when . the history ' of civilization is completed, when
there is nothing more to say as to om* present existence,
man inevitably asks himself whether all is exhausted,
whether he has reached the end of all things?”
This problem I cannot now discuss. I speak of it only
because the thought which, while writing tliis book, has
come with inexpressible cheer to me, may also be of
cheer to some who read it; for, whatever be its fate, it
will be read by some who in their- heart of hearts have >
.taken the cross of a new crusadSy.’-.^This; thought will
come to. them without my suggestion ; but we are surer
that we see a star when we know that others also see it.
The truth that I have tried to make clear will not find
«asy acceptance. If that could be, it would have been
■ accepted long ago. If that could be, it. would never have
been obscured. But it will find friends— those who will
toil for it; suffer for.it;- if need be, die for it. This is the
power of Truth. '
555
556
CONCLUSION
Will it at length prevail? Ultimately, yes. But in
our own times, or in times of which any memory of us
remains, who shall say?
For the man who, seeing the want and misery, the
ignorance and brutishness caused by unjust social in-
stitutions, sets himself, in so far as he has strength, to
right them, there is disappointment and bitterness. So
it has been of old time. So is it even now. But the
bitterest thought — and it sometimes comes to the best
and bravest — is that of the hopelessness of the effort,
the futility of the sacrifice. To how few of those who
sow the seed is it given to see it grow, or even with cer^
tainty to know that it will grow.
Let us not disguise it. Over and over again has the
standard of Truth and Justice been raised in this world.
Over and over again has it been trampled down — often-
times in blood. If they are weak forces that are op-
posed to Truth, how should Error so long prevail? If
Justice has but to raise her head to have Injustice flee
before her, how should the wail of the oppressed so long
go up?
But for those who see Truth and would follow her;
for those who recognize Justice and would stand for her,
success is not the only thing. Success! Why, False-
hood has often that to give; and Injustice often has that
to give. Must not Truth and Justice have something to
give that is their own by proper right — ^theirs in essence,
and not by accident?
That they have, and that here and now, every one
who has felt their exaltation knows. But sometimes the
' clouds sweep down. It is sad, sad reading, the lives of
the men who would have done something for their fel-
lows. To Socrates they gave the hemlock; Gracchus
they killed with sticks and stones; and One, greatest
and purest of all, they crucified. These seem but types.
To-day Russian prisons are full, and in long procesr'
THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDHAL LIFE
557
sions, men and women, who, but for high-minded pa-
triotism, might have lived in ease and luxury, move in
chains towards the death-in-life of Siberia. And in
penury and want, in neglect and contempt, destitute
even of the sympathy that would have been so sweet,
how many in every country have closed their eyes?
This' we see.
But do we see it all? . .
In writing I have picked up a newspaper. In it is
short account, evidently translated from a semi-official
report, of the execution of three Nihilists at Kieff ^the
Prussian subject Brand tner, the unknown man calling
himself Antonoff, and the nobleman Ossinsky. At the
foot of the gallo.ws they were permitted to kiss one an-
other. “Then the hangman cut the rope, the surgeons
pronounced the victims dead, the bodies were buried at
the foot of the scaffold, and the Nihilists were given up
to eternal oblivion." Thus says the account. I do not
believe it. No; not to oblivion!
I have in this inquiry followed the course of my own
thought. When, in mind, I set out on it I had no theory
to support, no conclusions to prove. Only, when I first
realized the squalid misery of a great city, it appalled
and tormented me, and would not let me rest, for think-
ing of what caused it and how it could be cured.
But out of this inquiry has come^tq me something
did not think to find, and a faith that was dead revives.
The yearning for a further life is natural and deep. It
grows with intellectual grors'th, and, perhaps none really
feel it more than those who have begun to see how great
is the universe and how infinite are the vistas which
every advance in knowledge opens before us— vistas
' which would require nothing short of eternity to explore.
But in the mental atmosphere of our times, to the great
558
CONCLUSION
majority of men on whom mere creeds have lost their
hold, it seems impossible to look on this yearning save
as a vain and childish hope, arising froih man’s egotism,
and for which there is not the slightest ground or war-
rant, but which, on the contrary, seems inconsistent with
positive knowledge. , •
Now, w'hen we come to analyze and trace up the ideas
that thus destroy the hope of a future life, we shall find
them, I think, to have their source, not in any revela-
tions of physical science, but in certain teachings of
political and social science which have deeply permeated
thought in all directions. They have their root in the
doctrines, that there is a tendency to the production' of
more human beings than can be provided for; that vice
-and misery are the result of natural laws, and the means
•by which advance goes on; and that human progress is
by a slow race development. These doctrines, which
have been generally accepted as approved truth, do
what, except as scientific interpretations have been
colored by them, the extensions .of physical science do
not do — they reduce the individual to , insignificance; •
they destroy the idea that there can be in the ordering
of the universe any regard for his existence, or any
recognition of what we call moral qualities.
' • It is difficult to reconcile the idea of human immor-
tality with the idea that nature wastes men by con-
stantly bringing them into being where there- is no room
•for them. It is impossible to reconcile the idea of an
intelligent and beneficent Creator with the belief that
the wretchedness and degradation which are the lot of
such a large proportion of human kind result from his
enactments; while the idea that man mentally arid
physically is the result of slow modifications perpetuated
by heredity, irresistibly suggests the idea that it is the
race life, not the individual life, which is the object of
human existence. Thus has vanished with many of us,
X THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE 559
snd is still vanishing with more of us, that belief which
.in the battles and ills of life affords the strongest sup-
port and deepest consolation.
Now' in the inquiry through which we have passed^
We have ihet these doctrines and seen their fallacy. We
have seen that population does not tend to outrun sub-
sistence; we have seen that the waste of human powers
nnd the prodigality of human suffering do not spring
from natural laws, -but from the ignorance and selfish-
ness of men in refusing to conform to natural laws. We
have seen that human progress is not by altering the
nature of men; but that, on the contrary, the nature of
naen seems, generally speaking, always the same.
Thus the nightmare which is banishing from the mod-
ern world the belief in a future life is destroyed. Not
that all difficulties are removed — for turn which way
We may, we come to what we cannot comprehend; but
that difficulties are removed which seem conclusive and
insuperable. And, thus, hope springs up.
But this is not all.
Political Economy has been called the dismal science,
and as currently taught, is hopeless and despairing. But
this, as we have seen, is solely because she has been
degraded and shackled; her truths dislocated; her har-
monies ignored; the word she would utter gagged in her
mouth, and her protest against wrong turned into an
indorsement of injustice. Freed, ns I have tried to free
her — in her own proper symmetry, Political Economy is
radiant with hope.
For properly understood, the laws wliich govern the
production and distribution of wealth show that the
Want and injustice of the present social state arc not
necessary; but that, on the contrary, a social state is
" possible in which poverty would bo unknown, and all
56U
CONCLUSION
the better qualities and higher powers of human nature
would have opportunity for full development.
And, further than this, when we see that social de-
velopment is governed neither by a Special Providence
nor by a merciless fate, but by law, at once unchange-
able and beneficent; when we see that human will is
the great factor, and that taking men in the aggregate,
their condition is as they make it; when we see that eco-
nomic law and moral law are essentially one, and that
the truth which the intellect grasps after toilsome effort
is but that which the moral sense reaches by a quick in-
tuition, a flood of light breaks in upon the problem of
individual life. These countless millions like ourselves,
who on this earth of ours have passed and still are pass-
ing, with their joys and sorrows, their toil and their
striving, their aspirations and their fears, their strong
perceptions of things deeper than sense, their common
feelings which form the basis even of the most divergent
creeds — ^their little lives do not seem so much like mean-
ingless waste.
The great fact which Science in all her branches shows
is the universality of. law. ’ Wherever he can trace it,
whether in the fall of an apple or in the revolution of
binary suns, the astronomer sees the working of the
same law, which operates in the minutest divisions in
which we may distinguish space, as it does in the im-
measurable distances with which his science deals. Out
of' that which lies beyond his telescope comes a moving
body and again it disappears. So far as he can trace
its course the law is ignored. Does he say that this is an
exception? On the contrary, he says that this is merely
a part of its orbit that he has seen; that beyond the
reach of his telescope' the law holds good. He makes
his calculations, and after centuries they are proved.
Now, if we trace out the laws which govern human
life in society, we find that in the largest as in the small-
THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE
561
est community, they are the same. We find that what
seem at first sight like divergences and exceptions are
but manifestations of the same principles. And we find
that everywhere we can trace it, the social law runs into
and conforms with the moral law; that in the life of a
community, justice infallibly brings its reward and in-
justice its punishment. But this we cannot see in in-
dividual life. If we look merely at individual life we
cannot see that the laws of the universe have the slight-
est relation to good or bad, to right or wrong, to just or
Unjust.* Shall we then say that the law which is mani-
fest in social life is not true of individual life? It is
Dot scientific to say so. We would not say so in refer-
;ence to anything else. Shall we not rather say this sim-
ply proves that we do not see the whole of individual
life?
The laws which Political Economy discovers, like the
facts and relations of physical nature, harmonize with
what seems to be the law of mental development — not a
necessary and involuntary progress, but a progress in
which the human will is an initiatory force. But in life,
as we are cognizant of it, mental development can go
but a little way. The mind hardly begins to awake
ere the bodily powers decline — it but becomes dimly
conscious of the vast fields before it, but begins to learn
and use its strength, to recognize relations and extend
i ~ ^ •
*Let us not delude our children. If for no other reason than
for that which Plato gives, that when they come to discard that '
ivhich. we told them as pious fable they will also discard that
<vhich we fold them as truth. The virtues which relate to self do
generally bring their reward. Either a merchant or a thief will
be more successful if he be sober, prudent, and faithful to his
promises; but as to the virtues which do not relate to self—
“It seems a story from the world of spirits,
When any one obtains that which he merits,
Or any merits that which he obtains.”
562
’ CONCLUSION
its sympathies, when, with the death of the body, it
passes away. Unless there is something more, there
seems here a break, a failure. Whether it be a Hum-
boldt or a Herschel, a Moses who looks from Pisgah, a
Joshua who leads the host, or one of those sweet and
patient souls who in narrow circles live radiant Jives,
there seems, if mind and character here developed can
go no further, a pmposelessness inconsistent with what
we can see of the linked sequence of the universe.
By a fundamental law of our minds — the law, in fact,
upon which Political Economy relies in all her deduc-
tions— we cannot conceive of a means without, an end; -
a contrivance without an object. Now, to all nature, so
far as we come in contact with it in this world, the sup-
port and employment of the intelligence that is in man
furnishes such an end and object. But unless man him-
self may rise to or bring forth something higher, hie
existence is unintelligible. So strong is this metaphysi-
cal necessity that those who deny to the individual any-
thing more than this life are compelled to transfer the
idea of perfectibility to the race. But as we have seen,
and the argument could have been made much more
complete, there is nothing whatever to. show any essen-
tial race imprpvement. Human progress is not the im-
provement of human nature. The advances in which
civilization consists are not secured in the constitution
of man, but in the constitution of society. They 'are
thus not fixed and permanent, but may at any time be
lost — nay, are constantly tending to be lost. And fur-:
ther than this, if human life does not continue beyond
what we see of it here, then we are confronted, with re-
gard to the race, with the same difficulty as with the
individual! For it is as certain that the race must die
as it is that the individual must die. _ We know that
there have been geologic conditions under which human
life was impossible on this earth. - We know that they
THE PROBLEM OF INDmDUAL LIFE bb'6
must return again. Even now, as tlic earth 'circles on
her appointed orbit, the northern ice cap slowly thickens,
and the time gradually approaches, when its glaciers
will flow again, and austral seas, sweeping northward,
burj’ the seats of present civilization under ocean wastes,
as it may be thej* now bury what was once as high a
civilization as our ovti. And bejmnd these periods, sci-
nce discerns a dead earth, an exhausted sun — a time
when, clashing together, the solar sj'^stem shall resolve
itself into a gaseous form, again- to begin immeasurable
mutations.
What then is the meaning of life — of life absolute^
and inevitably bounded by death? To me it seems
intelligible only as the avenue and vestibule to another
life. And its facts seem explainable only upon a theory
which cannot be expressed but in myth and symbol,
and which, ever3’’where and at all times, the myths and
symbols in which men have tried to portray their deep-
est perceptions do in some form express.
The scriptures of the men who have been and gone .
the Bibles, the Zend Avestas, the Vedas, the Dhamma^
padas, and the Korans; the esoteric doctrines of old
philosophies, the inner meaning of grotesque religions,
the dogmatic constitutions of Ecumenical Councils, the
preachings of Foxes, and Wesleys, and Savonarolas, the.
traditions of red Indians, and beliefs of black savages,’
have a heart and core in which they agree— a something
which seems like the variously distorted apprehensions
of a primary truth. And out of the chain of thought we
have been following there seems vaguely to rise a
glimpse of what they vaguely saw — a- shadowy gleam of
ultimate relations, the endeavor to express which inevi-.
tably falls into type and allegory. A garden in. which
are set the trees of good and evil. A vineyard in which
there is the Master’s work to do. A passage — from
{564
CONCLUSION
life behind to life beyond. A trial and a struggle,- of
which we cannot see the end.
Look around to-day.
^ Lo ! here, now, in our civilized society, the old allego-
ries yet have a meaning, the old myths are still true.
Into the Valley of the Shadow of Death yet often leads
the path of duty, through the streets of Vanity Pair
walk Christian and Faithful, and on Greatheart’s armor
ring the clanging blows. Ormuzd still fights with Ahri-
iLan — ^the Prince of Light with the Powers of Darkness.
He who will hear, to him the clarions of the battle call.
How they call, and call, and call, till the heart swells
that hears them! Strong soul and high endeavor, the
world needs them now. Beauty still lies imprisoned,
and iron wheels go over the good and true and beautiful
that might spring from human lives.
And they who fight with Ormuzd, though they may
not know each other — somewhere, sometime, will the
muster roll be called.
Though Truth and Right seem often overborne, we.
may not see it all. How can we see it all? All that is
passing, even here, we cannot tell. The vibrations of
matter which give the sensations of light and color be-
come to us indistinguishable when they pass a certain
point. It is only within .a like range that we have cog-
nizance of sounds. Even animals have senses which we
have not. And, here? Compared with the solar system
our earth is but an indistinguishable speck; and the
solar system itself shrivels into nothingness when gauged
with the star depths. Shall we say that what passes
from our sight- passes into oblivion? No; not into ob-
livion, Far, far beyond our ken the eternal laws must
hold their sway.
The hope that rises is the heart of all religions! ■ The
565
THE PRcJjEfLEM OF INDIVIDTJAE LIFE-
poets have sung it, the seers have told it, and in its
est pulses the heart of man throbs responsive to its trut .
This, that Plutarch said, is what in all times and m all
tongues has been said by the pure hearted and strong
sighted, who, standing as it were, on the mountain tops
of thought and looking over the shadowy ocean, have
beheld the loom of land:
‘'Men’s souls, encompassed here with bodies and p^-
sions, have no communication with God, except wha
they can reach to in conception only, by means oj
philosophy, as by a kind of an obscure dream. u
when they are loosed from the body, and removed into
the unseen, invisible, impassable, and pure region, this
God is then their leader and king; they there, as it were,
hanging on him wholly, and beholding mthout weariness
and passionately affecting that beauty w ic cann
be expressed or uttered by men.
INDEX
ot dvilization,
498^01 barbarians waste away,
B^tiat, cause of interest, 177-186.
jsset, Andrew, knight’s serrice, 384n.
doctrine of
intfSo4.^^*j°“ Malthus, 92-93, 100;
^r^t and profits, 168; relation be-
>.ween rent, wages and interest, 171.
i^^’ ^ages and interest
in new countries, 20-22. .
econonric prindples exem-
l?! 62-64, 79, 144-146,
asUlJ'lS®’ 272-277, 292-293, 346,
385-387, 894, 400, 436-437.
doctrine of its relation
.idle in industrial
epressions, 21; theory that wages
drawn from, 20-23; deductions
Ir^ this tteory, 24-25; varying defi-
monsof,33-36; difficulties besetting
I?® Ijrm, 38-39; exclusions of
39-40; distinguished from
Wealth, 42-49, 72-73; used in two
senses, 68-59; definitions of Smith,
McCulloch and Mill com-
44—49; wages not drawn from,
oe 39~70; does not limit industry,
46^0, 58-59; 81-87; does not main-
tam_ laborers, 71—79; modes in which
It labor, 80, 186-188, 197-198;
real functions of, 80-88; may. limit
i°rm and productiveness of industry,
5^-83; apparent want of generally
uue to some other want, 83-87;
limited by requirements of produc-
tion, _ 86-87; poverty not due to
scarrity of, 86, 87; not necessary to
production, 164; a form of labor,
164, 198, 203; its essence, 179; spuri-
OM, 189-194; not fixed in quantity,
195; if the only active factor in pro-
-■ auction, 202; its profits as affected
by wages, 310-311: wastes when not
Used,' 313; invested upon possessory
titles, 387. ■
Carey, Henry C., on capital, 35; rent,
227.
China, cause ■ of poverty and - famine,
121—122; civilization, 482-483.
Civilization, what, 477—478; prevailing
belief as to progress of, 478-481;
arrest of, 481—488; differences in,
489-506; its law, 506-526; retrogres-
sion, 484—488, 639-640; to endure
must be based on justice, 646-549;
character of Europeqn, 621, 629-530.
Civilization, modern. ite riddle, 10; has
not improved condition of the lowest
class, 283-286; development of, 373-
384; superiority, 622-523; may de-
cline, 527-531; indications of retro-
gression, 540-543; its possibilities,
464-472, 654.
Communities, industrial, extent of, 197.
Confucius, descendants of, 111-112.
Consumption, supported by contem-
poraneous production, 74-76; de-
mand for determines production, 77;
only relative term, 133; increase ofi
shows increasing production, 149.
Co-operation, not a remedy for poverty,
316-319; but will follow from the
extirpation of poverty, 454-472.
Debts, public, not capital, 190-191;
origin and abolition, 383-384, 455.
Demand, not fixed, 245, 247-249. (See
Supply and Demand.)
Deutsch, Emanuel, human nature, 497.
Development; concentration the order
of, 327.
Development Philosophy, relations to
Malthusianism, 101-102; insuffl-
•- dency of, 476-488.
Discount, high rates of, not interest.
21n.
Distribution, terms of exclusive, 38, 39,
162; laws of, 158—224; their necessary
relation, 160—164; ' as currently
taught, 160-161; contrasted with tme
laws, 219; equality of, 452-463.
30^308 «“edy for poverty.
Exchange, functions of, 27-30, 76"' a
part of production, ' 48-49; • brings
increase, 182-183, 186-187; eitenij
with progress of civilization, 197-198-
promotes civilization, 612-613. '
567
570
INDEX
factors of, 38, 162, 203, 272, 293-296;
includes exchange, 47-49; the iia-
mcdiate result of labor, 65-68;
rhrcctcd by demand for consump-
tion, 76; functions of capital in, 80-
88, 164; simple modes of sometimes
most efficient, 85-86; only relative
term, 133; increased shown by in-
creased consumption, 149; meam'ng
of the term, 155; utilizes reproductive
forces, 180-183; time an element in,
181-186; the modes of, 186-188; re-
course to lower points docs not
involve diminution of, 231-234; tend-
ency to large scale, 323, 327, 634-535;
susceptible of enormous increase,
433-436, 468, 550-
Profits, meaning of the term and con-
fusions in its use, 158-162, 189-194.
Progress, human, current theory of
considered, 476^88; in what it con-
sists, 489-505; its law, 506-526, 644—
652; retrogression, 627-643.
Progress, material, connection with
poverty, 7-11, 224 ; in what i t consists,
228-229; effects upon distribution of
■wealth, 230-243; effect of expecta-
tion raised by, 255-260; how it
results in industrial depressions, 263-
281; why it produces poverty, 282-
296.
Property, basis of, 333-336, 342-344;
erroneous categories of, 337; deriva-
tion of distinction between real and
personal, 379; private in land not
necessary to use of land, 397-402;
idea of transferred to land, 617-518.
Protection, its fallacies have their root
in belief as to wages, 19; effect on
agriculturists, 449-451; abolition by
England, effect of, 254; how protec-
tive taxes fall, 449— 450.
38^383; their present value, 383-
Py State,
appropriation of, 403-
^29, 617-^518; taxes on, 408-421;
effects of thus appropriating, 433-
488.
Reade, Win’wood, Martyrdom of Man,
4g0n, 481n. .
Religion, necessary to socialism, 320-
f21; promotive of civilization, 512,
522'-*524; Hebrew^, effects on race,
497-498; retrogression in, 689-540;
change going on, 542-543; animosi-
ties created by, SlOn: consensus of,
564-565,
Ricardo, definition of capital, 34; in-
ference as to population, 71; enun-
ciation of law of rent, 168; narrow
view of, 168-169, 227 ; tax on rent, 422.
Royce, Samuel, Deterioration and Race
Education, 541«, ,
Slaveholders of the South, their view
of abolition, 354-355.
Slavery, chattel, comparatively trivial
effects of, 349; modifying influences,
355-356; not truly abolished in
United States, 357, 394; never aided
progress, 625-526.
Smith, Adam, definition of capital, 33-
34, 37-44, 45, 47; recognizes truth as
to source of wages and then abandons
it, 61; influence of Malthusian theory
upon, 92; profits, 157; how economists
have followed him, 159; differmces
of wages in different occupations,
207-208, 209-210; his failure, to
appreciate the laws of distribution,
215; taxation, 418-421.
Socialism, its ends and mrans, 319-321;
practical realization of its ideal, 433-
472.
Quesnay, bis doctrine, 423-424, 433.
Rent, bearing upon Malthusian theory,
97-98, 132-134, 230-243, 244-254;
meaning of the term, 165; arises from
monopoly, 166; law of, 168-170; its
corollaries, 171, 218-219; effect of
their recognition, 171-172; aS related
. -to interest, 201-203; as related to
wages, 204-217; advance of explains
why wages and interest do not ad-
vance, 222-223; increased by increase
of population, 230-243; increased by
improvements, 244-254; by specula-
tion, 255-260; speculative advance in
the cause of industrial depression,
263-281; advance in explains -the
•persistence of poverty, 282-296; in-
crease of not prevented by tenant
right, 324; or fay df-vision of land,
S26-327; serf, generally fixed, 3o5-
356; confiscation of future -nCTMse,
360; a continuous robbery, 364-365;
feudal rents, 374-378; their abolition.
Social organization and life, possible
changes, 454-472.
Spencer, Herbert, compensation of land
owners, 359—360, 364; public owner-
ship of land, 404; evolution, 480, 487;
human progress, 480—481; social
differences, 504—500-
Strikes, 312-316.
Subsistence, population and, 91-150;
increases with population, 129—183;
cannot be exhausted, 133—134; in-
cluded in wealth, 142, 245; demand
for not fixed, 246—247. (See Mal-
thusian Theory.)
Supply and demand, of labor, 208-209;
relative terms, 267-268; as affected
by wages, 310-312.
Dean, his Modest Proposal, 126.
Taxation, eliminated in consideiing
distribution, 155-166; reduc^on of
•will not relieve poverty, SOO-duo,
INDEX
571
considered, 408-429; canons of, 408;
effect upon production, 408-414;
rase and cheapness in collection,
^4-416; certainty, 416-418; equal-
of> 418-421; opinions on, 422-
^5' .Selections to tax on rent,
f^ese of manifold taxation,
eew taxation falls on agri-
cultu^te, 449—462; effect of con-
fiscatmg rent by taxation, 433-472.
Tenant, Rev. "Win., cause of famine in
India, 115-116.
Thornton, Wm., on -wage fund, 18n; on
capital, 36.
ValuM, equation of, 196-197.
^egra, current doctrine, 17 ; it coincides
■OTth vulgar opinion, 18; but is incon-
' eistent with facts, 19—22; genesis
current theory, 22; difference
"cc^ccn it and that herein advanced,
^0—25; not drawn from capital but
produced by labor, 23, 25-30, 50-70;
mining of the term, 32-33; always
subsequent to labor, 57-69; faUacy
of the assumption that they are
drawn from capital, 68-59; for serv-
ices, 60n;_ connection between cur-
doctrine and Malthusian theory,
yi-95, 96-97; confusion of terms
produced by current theory, 159;
fdte of, 204; law of, 204-217 ; formu-
},®ted, 213; in different occupations,
‘ 407-212; as quantity and as propor-
tion, 216-217; not increased by
material progress, 304-306; minimum
fixed by standard of comfort, 304-
305; effect of increase or decrease on
employers, 310-311; equilibrium of,
311; not increased by division of land,'
32^327; why they tend to wages of
slavery, 348; efficiency of labor in-
creases with, 444.
Wages and Interest, “high or low to-
gether, 19-22; current explanation,
19; Cairnes’ explanation, 20-22; true
explanation, 170-172, 199-203, 222-
223; formulated, 219.
Wages of Superintendence, 169; used to
include profits of monopoly,_191-192.
Walker, Amasa, capital, 36.
Walker, Prof. F. A., wages, 18n,
capital, 36.
Wayland, Professor, definition of capi-
tal, 36.
Wealth, increase of not generally
shared, 8-9; meaning of term, 39-40;
interchangeability of, 47—49, 142,
181-182, 246-249; confounded with
money, 62-63; increases with popu-
lation, 140-150; accumulated, 146-
149; laws of distribution, 153-217;
formulated, 219; nature of, 148-160,
180, 205; political effects of unequal
distribution, 302, 630-538; effects of
just distribution, 440-446, 452-453,
454-472.
Live Music
Archive
Librivox
Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland
Museum of Art
Internet
Arcade
Console Living Room
Open Library
American
Libraries
TV News
Understanding
9/11